Trans Am
You Can Always Get What You Want
[Thrill Jockey]
Rating: 7.3
Once I had a keyboard. A little Casio keyboard. It had cheap plastic drum pads and goofy
preprogrammed "computer" sounds. Unfortunately, I had to give it back to the kid I borrowed
it from, but while the fun lasted, I got a huge kick out of its 100-instrument tone-bank.
And from the sound of it, Trans Am did, too. Their new Japanese b-sides collection, You
Can Always Get What You Want, employs that same preprogrammed Casio "computer" patch as
the primary structure for the opening track, "American Kooter."
Essentially, the track, which originally appeared in nine-minute studio form on their excellent
self-titled 1995 debut, is a demo of all the cool sounds that very Casio can generate. The
buzzing "airplane" sound, the emergency faux-"ambulance" siren, the "piano"-- it's all here
in tinny, distorted glory, backed by a thunderous drum section and confused bass line. And
though the track's low-fidelity epileptic funk is powerful enough to move crowds of uptight,
arty Chicago scenesters, "American Kooter" remains both one of the band's least inspired songs
to date.
You Can Always Get What You Want assembles 65 minutes of Trans Am's massive catalog
of import-only and previously unreleased tracks, and opens and closes with live performances.
The first three songs, "American Kooter," "Simulacrum" and "Man-Machine," are culled from a
1993 EP on UK-based SKAM records, and were recorded live at the Cave in Chapel Hill, North
Carolina during that summer. But regardless of the fact that these are some of the band's earliest
recordings, they're performed with an intensity that the band has rarely been able to achieve
on subsequent studio albums-- guitars pick on frayed nerve-endings, hi-hats click with robotic
precision, and crowd cheers reverberate in drunken frenzies. Strangely, the album's final
tracks-- live versions of four songs from 1996's Surrender to the Night, recorded that
fall at Washington, D.C.'s Black Cat-- are much closer to their studio counterparts and
considerably less engaging.
The majority of this record is composed of lost studio cuts yanked from the several hard-to-find
releases of Trans Am lore-- a 1995 Strength Magazine split 7", Tuba Frenzy #3, the
rare Australian comp In Flux Us-- alongside stray vault tracks like the beautifully
haywire "Nazi/Hippie Empire," a chopped-up "Party Mix" of Futureworld's "Am Rhein," and
the ambient, kraut-inflected "Monica's Story." It's during these tracks that Trans Am provide
fans with their most promising music to date, and hopefully, foreshadow future albums.
Despite this compilation's general lack of cohesiveness and its seemingly aimless live closers,
You Can Always Get What You Want hits more than it misses. And in the end, it fulfills
its purpose to save fans hundreds of dollars on overseas postage and import mark-ups. No longer
will Trans Am junkies tirelessly search eBay in hopes of encountering a $30 copy of the band's
Illegal Ass 12" or scrounge through racks of disorganized 7"s in New York record stores.
If you're looking for a place to start with these guys, though, go for their 1995 debut or
1998's The Surveillance.
-Ryan Schreiber