TransChamps - Double Exposure EP
(Thrill Jockey)
What is the first post rock song? If you said "DJed" or "Ry Cooder," you'd be 100% wrong. No, the first post rock song was "Jump" by Van Halen. Yes, it wasn't Bundy Brown or David Pajo or John McEntire that set the example of a guitar-centric rocker putting aside his ax for a synthesizer, it was Eddie Van Halen who with "Jump" made a song entirely out of keyboards (except for a short break in the middle) and in the process made the band's first #1 song. Brought together by a shared love of 1984, Trans Am and The Fucking Champs merge as TransChamps to make Double Exposure, a five song tribute to every 1970s and 1980s band they love that is shunned by the de facto music intelligentsia.
Combining two tight, technically proficient bands doesn't always lead to a tight, technically proficient band, but here, TransChamps is tighter than a Mormon bride. The band opens the EP with exactly what you'd expect from such an unholy union, "Give It to You," a 1970s arena rock churner that simultaneously lampoons all that is arena rock and heavy metal and points out what about the genres made them popular in the first place. Perhaps summoning Bad Company's "Feel Like Making Love," the TransChamps urge "Girl I've got to give it to you" with overactive metal guitar playing, with Tim Green giving the song the slickest of slick productions, making it seem eerily authentic. That metal you'd expect from the merger of these two bands is also in full swing on "Then Comes Saturday Night," however the other three songs on Double Exposure are radically different.
Continuing the retro-futurism of Trans Am's Red Line from last year, "Somebody Like You" is a dark, ominous new wave synthesizer song, perfect for wraparound shades and backlighting. "The Big Machine" is similar but starts off with a more industrial slant with its clanging percussion and clanks from the over-processed guitars, and the song is eventually overtaken by a hyperspeed Satriani-style guitar part. The oddest song on the EP, though, is "First Comes Sunday Morning," which is, believe it or not, an acoustic folk-pop song, much like a Ghost or Jefferson Airplane song. The song is so out of place that it's hard to get a hold of, but, like the rest of the EP, it is well crafted and perfectly performed.
Although the two bands put full effort into this collaboration, and it shows in how tight the band is and how slick the recording is, Double Exposure still is somewhat of a disappointment. The bands took this opportunity not to make great music but to celebrate and revel in the cheesy aspects of all those cheesy old bands. Double Exposure is fun to listen to, but all the grandiose aspirations the two groups put into referencing those cheesy bands on Red Line and IV are nixed in favor of maximum kitsch appeal.
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