WARREN ZEVON - Transverse City (1989)

Unlike pretty much everything that came before it, which has a bit of a reputation (Sentimental Hygeine as the one with R.E.M., the sober record, the revival after a down period, etc.) I didn't have any particular expectations coming in to Transverse City other than some off-peak Zevon.  We're fully mired in the period that's only for the die-hards, where Zevon just wasn't on the world's radar.  He still made music, though!

Track One:  "Transverse City"

I'm not much of a fan of a lot of things about the '80s, and although some great music happened there, the decade-specific pieces of the overall audio aesthetic rarely fail to make me cringe.*  To me, "Transverse City," both the song and the record, get off to a bad start with the first sound being synthesizer.  Sure enough, synths soon envelop everything, with the analog instruments struggling to get heard.  That type of sound, which I guess once sounded slick and futuristic (especially in the early days of new wave) sounds thin and processed, neither punchy nor organic.  Not great if your tastes skew towards rock and roll!  Yet my streaming service calls Transverse Zevon's psychedelic album and talks about its roots in the '60s.  I don't know that I'm getting that, but I think I should at least take the idea seriously given that Jerry friggin' Garcia is playing the guitar line here.

To be clear, what I mentioned above is the initial impression.  Second impression is that, well, that is a pretty captivating synth line, so if you're going to build a song around it, it's a good one to wear down the listener's defenses with.  Zevon then comes in with a vocal approach as he invites someone to what sounds like a Vegas-like hellscape *of the future!* with his singing being in parts compelling and repetitious.  It works within limits.  He does sometimes nail the art of making a collection of syllables sound good, whether the meaning is immediately clear or not.  Take the first iteration of the chorus - "here's the harvest of contusions" and such roll off the tongue.

Then take the second iteration of the chorus.  "Here's the...  here's the..."  All delivered the same way in the same cadence.  The effect was already exhausting earlier in the song; now it's positively grueling.  Thirteen repetitions of the central phrase is just too much; eight was the correct amount.  

In all, "Transverse City" (the song) had the potential to be a classic, and emerges as more of an interesting curio.  

Track Two:  "Run Straight Down"

Transverse does a cool thing during the first few tracks that I wish it'd have kept up, in which each song clearly ends, then a sound effect fades in that then transitions into the next song.  

In this case we transition into more of a guitar driven piece in which Zevon chants the names of chemicals (a few of which I've worked with!) over which a second Zevon vocal track spools out a world of impending doom.  The opening couplet is one of those that so few singers can manage:

I was walking in the wasted city

Started thinkin' about entropy

One would wish that the lyric, especially the part in which the easiest response to environmental catastrophe is to slump in front of the TV and watch it play out weren't timeless.  Obviously, it's timeless.

"Run Straight Down" is singular, memorable, and yet has never successfully gotten me to pay attention throughout its entire length.  I'm going to call it an incredible two and a half minute song that doesn't have enough content when spread out over four minutes.  At this point, a very interesting and very different type of Zevon record, even if it hasn't landed any knockout punches yet.

Track Three:  "The Long Arm Of The Law"

Police helicopters transition us into presumably a different story in the same dystopian future, starting with another classic opening line:

When I was young, times were hard
When I got older, it was worse
First words I ever heard
"Nobody move, nobody get hurt"

When did Zevon pick up a Tom-Petty-like mastery of opening lines?  Anyway, TLAOTL just keeps growing on me.  I again wish the track weren't so synthesizer based, but I accept that that's just part of the particular texture of this block of songs.  Plus, there are more piano-sounding keys too, and those parts are memorable, especially the dissonant chords during the bridge.  The song has a catchy chorus for casual listening whilst throwing in musical details aplenty for deeper listening.  Where the first two tracks (especially the first one) ride a good musical idea or two into the ground, track number three is just crawling with cool ideas.  Yeah, I'm going to call classic here.  Good stuff.

Unfortunately, the idea that Transverse will be a concept album sort of ends here.  No sound effect outro, and the rest of the songs aren't explicitly set in a ruined near-future, although some of hte others could be made to fit if you squint hard enough.

Track Four:  "Turbulence"  

Did Zevon know how to use his words or what?  "Turbulence" mostly lives and dies by its chorus, which works because of the use of assonance and alliteration.  "Turmoil back in Moscow brought this turbulence down on me."  I think it's the two "tur" words followed by two prepositions that seals it.  The rest of the song is mostly a punchy riff and an exercise in keeping that line fresh, throwing every trick in the book at it, from Russian lyrics to "hey!"s to more double tracked vocals.  Solid.

Track Five:  "They Moved The Moon"

I don't remember Zevon using the multi-tracked vocals so relentlessly or to such effect in the past.  "They Moved The Moon" perfectly employs its wall of synths - although I still hate the electronic drums - to create empty space into which the vocals can provide some mournful sentiment.  Who can't relate to the unsettling feeling that "they" moved the moon, changed the stars around?  Is it a personal crisis or feeling unmoored from the world?**  It works either way.  Zevon's vocal lines getting layered onto each other is the inevitable conclusion - "I'm so confused...  I feel so strange..."  Classic here, too.

Track Six:  "Splendid Isolation"

From here we move into the more standard pop-rock portion of the record.  I'll save my complaints for the next song, because this song is "Splendid Isolation."  I can't complain about a killer harmonica part instead of the damn synths.  Knowing that Neil Young played on this record, I wondered if this was him, but, nope, Zevon is credited.  Why isn't there more harmonica?  It sounds great!  If he could do this the whole time, why didn't he?  I actually welcome the extended outro, because that harmonica needs more time to shine.

Lyrically we get humor as the narrator springs off a mention of Disneyland to invite a presumably silent Goofy to be his only company, whilst it's clear that he means it with how resigned and fed up with the human world he is.  That "don't want nothing to do with you" lands hard.  I've definitely been there.

Track Seven:  "Networking"

Okay, this one is kinda dumb.  Not unpleasant (except for those damn horn sounds), actually pretty catchy, but in the end a bland synthetic pop ditty.  Lyrics are mostly computer puns without a message, like you get with every singer-songwriter who was getting old once computers became a big deal.  Actually, if nothing else, it's an interesting reminder that although I often forget it - and I fucking lived it! - there was a good period in the late '80s and early '90s in which desktop computers were a big deal, yet the internet was not ubiquitous, available only to a minority of CPU uses.  Anyway, the terms all come from that era.  Will anyone born after 1981 ever get the "truly BASIC" joke?

Track Eight:  "Gridlock"

Heh, I enjoy "Gridlock," even if it's still more basic stuff.  On one level quintessential LA complaints, nothing insightful or incisive.  But on the other hand, everyone sometime will be in one too many traffic jams and just want to scream and/or go on a killing spree.  I like the guitar rock feel here, and Zevon sells the claustrophobia and mounting frustration as he should.

Track Nine:  "Down In The Mall"

I've lived this era too.  There was a period in which malls were exciting and then, I assume at roughly the same trajectory as suburbs, they came to represent the sad, decaying memories of past excesses.  In 1989, I believe that the mall was still a central hub for people to make and spend money, whilst rock and roll using it as a low-hanging metaphor for soulless consumerism was thoroughly established.  Well, of all the  songs to ever sneer at mall culture and shopping, this is one of them.

Track Ten:  "Nobody's In Love This Year"

We end our tour through ennui in a synthetic world with Zevon's sentimental side, mourning lack of human connection.  Might have been a good opportunity to lean on a more organic sound and fewer layers and production, yes?  Sorry, don't care for the '80s!  

Anyway, I like the idea about a love song about the lack of love that could be read as an individual story or a reflection of society equally well.  Either way, the detachment that the narrators of other tracks expressed reaches its end point here.  I like the vocal melody a lot.  I really like the vulnerability.  When Zevon is on point with finding the perfect place to drop a straightforward line like "I don't wanna get hurt," well, he's on point.

Unfortunately I do get hung up on NILTY becoming yet another in the long line of songs to misuse "you and I" vs. "you and me."  Song lyrics are loose with grammar all the damn time, so I wish I could explain why that particular mistake drives me up the wall.  It does.  Albeit not enough to ruin a solid closing track.

Overall thoughts:

It's kind of a shame the back half of the record has so many standard and middling cuts, although again, hard to complain if one of them is "Splendid Isolation."  The first five tracks together are a mood and I can handle the new-wave influences in the name of getting to that mood.  They take one to a place that doesn't sound quite like anywhere Zevon's taken us before.  I gather that I'm not the first person to note that Transverse City sounds as though it started life as a concept record about a dystopian near-future and that its creator then gave up on it or got bored or something midway through.  Whether that's actually how it played out, I wanted more time with this version of Zevon.  I've complained enough that I like sparse acoustic Zevon while Transverse is giving me sparse wall of synths in an empty room Zevon, but I hope I've conveyed that either way, I appreciate the sparse fatalism.  

No bad tracks here, just a few too many that're less good keep the record from a higher rating.  To me, real unexpected pleasure of an album.  Where Sentimental Hygiene disappointed me a bit by sounding a little forced, with its auteur trying to be something he wasn't anymore, Transverse feels more vital, the work of a songwriter who still has something new to say and is figuring out new ways to say it.  I'm excited for the rest of the road now.

Favorite track:  "Splendid Isolation"

Runner up:  "The Long Arm Of The Law"

Least favorite track:  "Down In The Mall"

Rating:  3.5/5

On to Mr. Bad Example, whenever I get around to it!

 

 

Definitive list of records by Warren Zevon profiled so far, in order of what I have decided is unambiguously their quality

1)  Bad Luck Streak In Dancing School

2)  Excitable Boy

3)  Warren Zevon

4)  Transverse City 

5)  The Envoy

6)  Sentimental Hygiene 

7)  Wanted Dead Or Alive

 

 

*In case either of my readers isn't aware, when I'm not blogging about rock singer-songwriters like Fish or Zevon, nowadays I'm blogging about power metal, an overall really interesting and quirky subgenre that's got way more than meets the eye going on.  Power metal got its start in the '80s and, much like a lot of metal, still has a little stink of that decade on it.  It's been a constant uphill battle for me while listening to those records to look past the '80s-adjacent chaff to get to the wheat.  Just a preference for what I like to listen to, that's all.

**Obviously feeling lost in a world gone askew isn't anything I relate to in 2025.  They can't all be timeless...