After 24 years and 10 albums, we’re still trying to figure out Trans Am. A statement of misguided complication or exaggeration? Maybe. But the trio—guitarist Phil Manley, bassist/keyboardist/vocalist Nathan Means, drummer Sebastian Thomson—hasn’t exactly made comprehension easy considering its non-linear progression, lack of canned press statements and refusal to submit to expectation. Trans Am’s throw-at-a-dartboard-and-see-what-sticks approach notwithstanding, the band finds itself with a 10th album in its laps. Volume X (Thrill Jockey) leans toward the streamlined sensibility of 2007’s Sex Change, snidely and playfully existing somewhere between krautrock, post-rock, electro-rock, punk rock and other prefix-rock. Trans Am will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our new feature on them.
Means: I’ve read that agriculture was the point at which things started going downhill for humans. One day, you are mucking around in the forests collecting food and playing with wood sprites. The next, you have to go to the same fucking fields for the rest of your life. It floods. Then there’s drought. The early days seemed to have lots of severe pestilence as well. You can’t travel. And because everyone is stuck in one place, they start building temples and all that. Not to mention money and standing armies. On the other hand, would people from 10,000 years ago really complain about watching Netflix in my office all day and then going downstairs to get a coffee and a monkey muffin? Hard to be sure.
