Some of the best music of the past hundred years has been inspired during times of great political turmoil. The Folk era was inspired by the aftermath of World War II, and again, during the Vietnam War, while the punk movement began directly after Vietnam and blossomed again during the Reagan administration. In fact, for a while, musicians were expected to be controversial and political in their musings in order to be taken seriously.
These days, though, most musicians seem content to tiptoe around any world events that aren't decidedly pro-American, giving brief speeches preceding concerts on how they feel about world events, or various political heads of state, before launching into a set of music about prairie dogs or true love, claiming the former is allegory and the latter is heartfelt. A growing number of musicians have stopped relying on allegory, however, deciding that blunt, brute force might work even better than gentle Armageddon poetry.
Determined to not fit in with the segement of alternative rock that has decided that an apolitical stance is what these times call for, the trio of Phil Manley, Nathan Means, and Sebastian Thompson, a.k.a. the mostly-instrumental group Trans Am, has released a beautifully blunt album titled "Liberation" on Thrill Jockey Records-blunt in its anti-Bush anti-war message, but incredibly complex in its musical delivery of samples, electronic whines and atmospherics, and the same rocket-fueled rhythmic propulsion that marked previous Trans Am releases such as "Future World."
For pure chutzpah, Liberation features songs like "Uninvited Guest", where a sampled and reworked Bush speech declares, ""Our commitment to weapons of mass destruction is America's tradition," "The Iraqi people love their oppressors," "We have destroyed Iraqi hospitals and schools," etc, "Divine Invasion", "Idea Machine," and "Total Information Awareness" also work to parody the Bush clan's rhetoric of world domination and terror. Cold, sinister synthesizers and Armageddon-coming percussion conjure images of a harsh, Fritz Lang-type of futurism through most of the album, while songs like "Idea Machine" and "Total Information Awareness" mix politics with just rockin' out, old school.
"We put the whole album together during most of last year," says Trans Am's Philip Manley. "It sort of came about organically. We have a recording studio in the heart of Washington DC, and we were just totally inspired by reading the news every day, and seeing the political events unfolding around us from a day to day basis.
"Basically, the whole attitude has been that it's not cool to be political," says Trans Am's Philip Manley on "Liberation". "I think no one wants to pay attention, because things are basically just too gruesome to face head-on. It's too depressing." Not content to tell people what they think about the Bush administration, Trans Am has also been turning their stage into a visual performance as well as an aural one, with Manley donning a Bush mask and behaving in what he calls "a mocking manner." "I'm always expecting someone to throw a beer bottle at me," says Manley of his act. "But like Bush says, 'Bring it on.'
Despite a few detractors in the media, however, "Liberation" has been well-met by Trans Am fans for the most part, a fact that Manley finds a ltitel disheartening. "We were hoping to get more flak for what we were saying on the album" he says. "We haven't been getting as much as we'd hoped. Maybe we just don't appeal to Bush supporters in the first place. I just think that if were to appeal to a wider audience, that maybe there'd be more confrontation. I think there's just a certain type of person that likes Trans Am, that basically are already on our side. We're preaching to the choir in this case. But that's not going to stop us from saying what we're saying.
"We just got back from a 6-week tour of Europe, and we've had a surprisingly good response from Europe, considering we're Americans," adds Manley. "We were a little bit worried going into it, just because Americans in general are so completely unpopular right now, world-wide, but I think a lot of people respond to our artwork and the message on our album. In the U.S.? I'm interested to see if we might provoke a little bit of a different reaction, especially in the middle of the country, where it's more politically split. I mean, we're into it, we're kind of up to the challenge, see if people confront us. It's better than, like I said, preaching to the choir. At least then there would be some back-and-forth."
Of course, at the back of every Apocalyptic messenger's mind is the hope that things will change, hopefully, for the better. Manley and Trans Am are no different, although Manley doesn't have any expectations of great things resulting from the upcoming Presidential election. "I think it's going to be a really close election," says Manley. "Either Bush'll win it, or he'll buy it, either way, you know? We'll see. Creepy thing is-and I'm a pretty big conspiracy theorist," he adds, laughing, "I almost feel that the Republicans, in particular the Bush clan, saw to it that Kerry was his opponent. Both those guys were in that Secret Society, were Skull & Bones blood brothers, so as far as I'm concerned, they're in cahoots. That whole Skull & Bones thing is pretty sketchy. I think a lot of the foundation of that is rooted in these weird fascist fraternities from Germany.
"Fucking Yale students, that's all it is. Rich, blood-blue New Englanders," he finishes. "But I still think that Kerry would be better than Bush."
