Trans Am and The Fucking Champs (who must be pretty sure of themselves, though I don't hear it), two bands which I am slightly (the first) or barely (the second) familiar with, apparently joined in on this EP for an unapologetic trip down guilty pleasures lane, only to prove that they are guilty for a reason - unless you take them as creative starting points and not ready-made templates; but for the most part that is not what you get here. A couple of tracks in particular (and apparently more in the Champs' wheelhouse), with some juvenile double-tracked electric guitars, don't even meet the high-school hard-rock band standard. Beyond that, they go for a more acoustic pastoral number, and another one with some goth-sounding guitars, that don't strive to be anything more that merely ok (which they merely are), but it's only on "The big machine", with its mechanical jolts and electrical discharges, that they get creative with their inspiration, and show they could come up with something exciting together. Even if it feels a bit derivative of the King Crimson sound circa Lark's Tongues in Aspic - particularly of what Jamie Muir's percussion work brought to it, with his unconventional kit of things to make noises with (from which Bill Bruford, drumming alongside him, subsequently took a lot for his own style) - they do put it to good use, so I can't complain. Otherwise, I'm just relieved that I have never listened to a Whitesnake album; if I had, I suspect I might have come out of this with a newfound appreciation for their art...
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