Trans Am Travels Back to the Future

Though its music had no real hooks of its own, experimental rock trio Trans Am evoked the spirit of pop acts ranging from Gary Numan to Stevie Wonder at the Roxy on Sunday.

Not that you could sing along or even really dance to the sometimes groovy beat, but the Washington, D.C., group blended electronic music and hard rock in surprisingly dynamic and compelling ways. Its hourlong head trip was a welcome contrast to the often cold and tedious prog/new wave of its current album, “Futureworld.” All the more amazing, the mostly instrumental program was executed with only bass guitars, keyboards and drums.

The players’ sonic explorations have differed markedly from album to album, yet there was nothing incongruous about the performance’s fusion of clattering electro-funk beats, Black Sabbath crunch and shimmering new wave. Unlike the earlier works, the tunes from “Futureworld” featured leader Philip Manley’s distorted electro-vocals, half-buried by icy sheets of vintage-sounding synthesizer.

Most dominant was an agreeably heavy, spaced-out melodic grind that was no more forward-thinking than the trio’s throwback futurism but that sounded strangely fresh in this context. By tempering its intellectual exercises with a complete dedication to rocking out, Trans Am noisily demonstrated that even the hoariest rock cliches can be tweaked enough to survive into the next century.