Trans Am: Liberation

Over the course of half a dozen albums, Trans Am's tongue hasn't left its collective cheek long enough for the group to say anything clearly: While its music can be exciting and even groundbreaking, it always seems to be performed half in jest, thereby lessening the impact. Maybe that's why the trio's albums feel so of-the-moment: Once a good joke has been heard the first time, it's rarely as funny again. In the group's defense, Trans Am has never been about repeating a punchline. Each of its records, from 1996's terrifically skewed indie-prog template Trans Am to the slick synth sounds of 2002's song-based snoozer TA, has ricocheted far enough from the last to send fans scrambling for redefinition. So what does a band with a permanent ironic stance do when it wants to convey something of substance Trans Am answers the question with Liberation, or at least provides as much of an answer as a largely instrumental rock group can. Liberation's artwork—oddly clipped pictures of battlefields interspersed with photos of George W. Bush and friends—forecasts a more serious tone immediately, and after one track of cloak-and-dagger movie music ("Outmoder"), the band unleashes its first political salvo, "Uninvited Guest." Ominous tones and the roar of a clapping crowd sit underneath a cut-and-paste job of Bush speaking. The vocal blends are seamless enough to be creepy, and only slightly too bold to be believable: To hear Bush state, without hesitation, "Operation Iraqi Freedom was carried out with a combination of lies and intimidation the enemy did not expect, and the world had not seen before," is jarring and funny, but mostly jarring. Just one other track on Liberation proves as direct: "Spike In Chatter" puts a human face on shock-and-awe via interview snippets with a civilian observer. Those two songs lend a thread to the rest of the album, as Trans Am's moody, chilly instrumentals take on an air of immediacy they otherwise wouldn't possess. Like its predecessors, Liberation won't make a lasting musical impression; unlike them, it'll stick around for other reasons.