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Tranzmitors

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Tranzmitors

 
Tranzmitors
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Canadian group revisits the glory days of mod.

  • We Say...

    Review by Chuck Eddy

    Vancouver has long had a knack for producing sprightly new wave bands, so the five-guy Tranzmitors emerging from the municipality that produced the Modernettes and Young Canadians is no shock. Their sound, though, could actually pass for British as easily as it could pass for 1981 — which might help explain why, in the U.K., they’re also the first band in decades to put out an album on Stiff Records.

    The group’s mod-revival melodies and snazzy wardrobe and crushes-on-birds-at-the-tube-station-after-school’s-out sensibility owe the most to the Jam, with further Anglophile echoes of XTC’s early herky-jerk, Madness’s chip-shop ska and Robert Smith’s mopey whine; the title “Why Don’t Boys Cry” clearly connects to the Cure, too.

    But their obsessions seem uncomplicated, across the board: Sometimes they get spurned, and sometimes they don’t. In “Beating Up My Heart,” a girl keeps opting for the singer’s friends, which damages his self-esteem Offspring-style; “Last Night,” contrariwise, has him patting himself on the back for seducing someone the evening before. “All the boys wanna get laid/ All the the girls wanna misbehave,” claims Tranzmitors’ rather polite rebellion statement “Everybody Wants to Lose Control.” And if their music never quite loses control itself, that’s part of its charm.

  • They Say...

    Review by Stewart Mason, All Music Guide

    How much does the Vancouver new wave revivalist quintet recall the sounds of the time and place that most influenced their music? Enough that after their self-titled debut album was released in North America, the venerable U.K. label Stiff Records was revived to give the record a European release, the label's first new output since it was shuttered in the mid-'80s. Ironically, though, the Tranzmitors' most obvious musical antecedent isn't a Stiff band, but Virgin Records' own XTC. Specifically, the Tranzmitors recall the first two XTC albums, when organist Barry Andrews was a key part of the band's herky-jerky blend of classic '60s influences and futuristic, loopy noise. All five members of the Tranzmitors have strong roots in the Vancouver pop-punk scene; indeed, at one point or another, everyone save keyboardist Jarrod O'Dell was in the Smugglers, one of the city's longest-running and most beloved punk-pop acts. (The Vindicators, New Town Animals, the Tonics and the Strike are among the other bands represented in this local scene supergroup.) This grounding in the roots of punk, power pop, and new wave is undoubtedly what makes Tranzmitors a more satisfying album than most in the new wave revival scene: these are not mere callow youth replicating a musical style they discovered in the thrift shops, but a slightly older, smarter set of musicians paying homage to a style that had been a direct personal influence. Singer Jeff McCloy has the mildly frantic, hiccupping vocal style down pat, while he and Nick Thomas chop out perfectly spiky guitar riffs over O'Dell's wheedling vintage synth sounds. As a result, songs like "Alma Blackwell," "Beating Up My Heart," and "Teen Man" don't just mildly recall the sound of the suburbs circa 1978-1982: they sound like the real deal. Honestly, the unscrupulous could pass off an mp3 of album opener "Plastic Genocide" as the sole single by some previously unknown new wave act circa 1980, and few if any would be the wiser. Perhaps it might not be likely that the Tranzmitors can maintain a career in this musical style -- heck, almost none of the original new wave bands were able to, either -- but that doesn't lessen the quality of this tremendously fun, danceable debut.

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