TRANS AM - Sex Change Review

Sex Change, Trans Am's sixth studio album, is an album with momentum. From the off, it drives onward with Kowalskian forward motion. Dynamic changes emerge out of the smoky synth fug, and driving bass rumbles up out of distant treated cymbals. Heroic and upbeat guitar and keyboard lines take off like planes, shooting into the air, all in a row....full text Sex Change is Trans-Am's feel-good album. To me, the first few songs sound like Kraftwerk or Tangerine Dream jamming with the Grateful Dead. The first two songs are filler. The tempo picks up with some electro moves on "Obscene Strategies", but unfortunately sounds like a Bobby Conn throwaway track. "Conspiracy of the Gods" is sort of a soundtrack to driving around in, well, a Trans-Am....full text After Liberation (2004), the band's musical depiction of imperialist paranoia in their hometown of Washington DC, Trans Am in effect split for a couple of years, the three members settling in San Francisco, Auckland and London. When they came together again to record Sex Change, they didn't have any equipment and had to record on borrowed gear, which has given the album a sense of immediacy and dynamism lacking previously....full text