- Label: 'Happy Happy Birthday To Me Records'
- Genre: 'Eighties'
- Release Date: '6.10.20.'- Catalogue No: 'HHBTM206'
Our Rating:
This is a re-issue/re-mix of Love Tractors legendary debut album, from Athens Georgia, originally released in 1982, Love Tractor where an early band for Armistead Welford who went on to be in House Of Freaks and Gutterball as well as playing with Steve Wynn and others and in Love Tractor he was alongside Mark Cline and Michael Richmond.
The album opens with Buy Me A Million Dollars that has a low-fi synth pop sound not miles away from being an male equivalent to Anomy, it feels quite urgent as it builds a soundscape as if they are trying to be an American equivalent to A Certain Ratio but a little bit less funky.
Sixty Degrees Below doesn't sound as chilly as the title suggests with some taut guitar playing similar to Altered Images, but without Claire Grogan's brilliant vocals, that makes this a cool instrumental bed.
Motorcade may be influenced by Magazine in more than the title but with deeply funky bassline and scratchy guitars this has a quite textural feel to it and like most of the album feels quite dancefloor orientated for weird indie disco's with cool spaghetti western whistling sounds too.
Festival opens with a Techno drumbeat married to a repeating guitar figure and has the feel of an upbeat Joy Division.
Cowboy Songs is not a country and western hoe down more of an indie dance instrumental that sounds like the sort of thing Holloy's were playing in the early 2000's crossed with a bit of a No Wave James Chance feel when, is it a Clarinet, comes in.
Hairy Beat could be the sound of the guys hanging outside the Bear's Den or a tribute to the big haired early 80's look, but it has some properly odd sounds going on around the insistent beat like they are making a funk record with no idea of what funk really is, either way it comes off and doesn't sound that hairy at all.
Tropical sort of presages the whole tropical house movement and could easily be re-mixed into a Tropical house banger, It also feels like it could have been on Ze records I love the guitar bit that keeps coming in and out and the spacious sound they have on it.
Wheel Of Pleasure is what I'd imagine, as the music for wallflowers to peel themselves off the wall and shake about too, it has a rather poppy sound to it and yet has some real depth in what's going on to keep everyone moving on the dancefloor.
Chilly Damn Willy isn't a tribute to the Pub Rock Band Chilli Willy & The Red Hot Peppers but is more taut indie dance funk before such a thing even existed.
Seventeen Days is a bit slower and more ponderous as we try to imagine what happened in those Seventeen Days for this to be the perfect soundtrack to it, and I'm guessing it is some sort of drug fueled journey towards inner peace.
The album closes with Fun To Be Happy that is as upbeat as the title and sounds like it wants to be party music to dance around and have lots of fun with as the guitar and keyboards come up with all sorts of interesting interludes and figures this is a cool way to close a truly rare thing an album of indie dance instrumentals from the early 80's.
Find out more at https://www.hhbtm.com/product/love-tractor-love-tractor/ https://www.facebook.com/luvtractor/
