Trans Am prove in one mildly amusing, backward-turned sitting that much of what defines "post-rock" sounds suspiciously like rock's longtime nemesis, the late-'70s pre-techno Euro-pop of
Kraftwerk and
New Order. With much of this record a simple meditation on the latter,
Surrender to the Night is surprisingly slim on new ideas, sounding for the most part either like a self-defacing gambit or an updater course for those who missed it the first time around. The group is at its best when they stumble onto the occasional square foot of new territory (as on "Cologne," "Tough Love," and the title cut, all of which wed live, more immediately rock-based instrumentation with electro-funk rhythms and synth figures), but much of
Surrender lays on familiar, by now somewhat fallow soil.