Album Review: Transit Method - "Othervoid"

Oh, wow.  It’s not very often that you hit play on a record and the first instinct is “this sounds like ‘Permanent Waves.’”  Not to say that Transit Method’s new album “Othervoid” begins with earnest yelling about “SALESMEN!” but the entire affect brings to mind the kind of proto-prog that Rush built a foundation, and indeed a very career upon.

There’s more to it than that, thankfully, or this review would be over already.  What makes “Othervoid” stand out from both the legacy of the bands who have come before and their prog-heavy contemporaries is that they color the edges with enough rock and in particular punk influences to make something so much more than another prog rock record.  

Almost like Jane’s Addiction was re-writing Rush songs (thinking specifically of Eric Avery’s idiomatic stompy-ness on bass,) there’s an edgy accessibility around this record, a baseline of two-four time sensibility that keeps “Othervoid” grounded and prevents it from floating too far into the purely artistic ether.

(A sidebar apropos to nothing – my brother loves Rush but hates Jane’s Addiction because he loathes Perry’s voice.  One of my best friends is the opposite, hating Geddy’s voice.  They have admitted to each other that there is a certain hypocrisy in both arguments.)

Nowhere does all the gibberish we’ve talked about above make itself more apparent than in the single “Psychometry,” which folds together articulate riffs with familiar layered-vocal choruses to make a piece that is both intricate, calculated and eminently easy to listen to.  It doesn’t hurt the band’s case that the guitars are capable of wringing out solos with that soulful, David Gilmour tone that plucks at the heartstrings (both here and particularly in the previous track, “Nightmare Machines.”)

Not done showing their versatility, Transit Method follows this up by laying down a chugging metal thumper with “Another Wasted Life,” and then the swinging, good-time rocker “The Outside.”  The sheer number of permutations this band is capable of are laudable in their own right, and calls back to the history of Rush, who seems to keep coming up over the course of the review and is in many ways an appropriate analog, if not an exact one.  Transit Method is bluesier than their Canadian counterparts, more likely to take journeys towards Thin Lizzy than jazz.  The other important distinction here is that vocalist Matt LoCoco sounds nothing like Geddy Lee; his tone will be familiar to fans of another Canadian singer, Priestess’ Mikey Heppner.  (Worth mentioning, Transit Method is from Austin, Texas.)

Breezing along at a quick and easy seven cuts, Transit Method burns bright at the end with the rollicking “Frostbite,” which rolls together everything we’ve talked about above and combines with a little dash of The Sword’s Austin-metal flavor.  It can’t be said enough – for an album of this type, one of “Othervoid’s” best decisions is to leave piles of fat and gristle on the cutting room floor, leading to seven digestible tracks that make for an album in total fighting shape.  

It’s difficult to encapsulate everything “Othervoid,” and by extension Transit Method, tries to be and maintain any kind of navigational or editorial brevity, which is a complicated way of copping out and saying “take our advice, and just listen to this record already.”  It should be re-stated for clarity – this is not a pure prog record, this is prog-adjacent, and is subsequently much better for it.  The folding of styles and versatility shown here makes for an album that is unique and enjoyable, the best such record in this style since Cave of Swimmers’ “Aurora.”