In 2004, Jennifer Herrema released the debut album from her post-Royal Trux band RTX.  Royal Trux had been a favorite band of mine for a few years and all of the Neil Hagerty solo albums had been great so far, so I was really excited about this new project.  I took the September 24th release date off of work so that  I could spend the whole day smoking weed and listening to the album, but was disappointed when  Rainy Day Records‘ shipment from Touch and Go (Drag City‘s distributor at the time) didn’t show up that day.  I was even more disappointed when Rainy Day‘s order came in the next day and I finally heard Transmaniacon.  What a shitty record!  11 songs of fairly straight forward bubble gum metal.  Not what I was expecting from the co-leader of one of the most forward thinking bands of the 90s.  Herrema‘s vocals were still as good as they had been with Royal Trux, but the music just wasn’t that interesting and it was a bummer that the best song on the album, “Joint Chief“, was just the lyrics to her old band’s song “Shockwave Rider“, except with stadium rock guitar riffs behind it.  I gave each new RTX album a listen whenever they came out, but they just didn’t do it for me.

Then in October of last year, Drag City Records announced that Herrema‘s RTX had “Split into ‘Black Bananas’,” and that the new band’s debut, “Rad Times Xpress IV” would be out in 2012. Read the rest of this entry →