{"id":26356,"date":"2023-10-27T05:30:59","date_gmt":"2023-10-27T09:30:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=26356"},"modified":"2023-10-27T08:48:10","modified_gmt":"2023-10-27T12:48:10","slug":"album-review-love-tractor-around-the-ben-40th-anniversary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2023\/10\/27\/album-review-love-tractor-around-the-ben-40th-anniversary\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Love Tractor — Around the Bend (40th Anniversary)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Forty years on, it\u2019s too easy to forget just how fertile a creative ground was the Athens, Georgia music scene of the early \u201880s. Sure, everybody knows about R.E.M. and The B-52\u2019s, but there was lots<\/em> more going on in the college town an hour\u2019s drive eat of Atlanta. And Love Tractor was a big part of that; one of the groups in the Athens vanguard, they made a string of well-received albums, the first few on Atlanta\u2019s own dB Recs.<\/p>\n

The second of those, 1982\u2019s Around the Bend,<\/i> was the group\u2019s first brush with chart action. Influential chart CMJ<\/i> placed the record at a peak of #32, providing forward momentum. That was impressive in any regard; more so because Love Tractor was primarily instrumental. And as most will know, music without vocals generally has a hard time gaining a commercial foothold.<\/p>\n

But Around the Bend<\/i> was really good. Newly reissued in 2023 on butterscotch-colored translucent vinyl, the album is now poised for a second hearing (or, of course, a first listen if you missed it four decades ago).<\/p>\n

The band\u2019s guitar-instro vibe provides a foundation for the songs, but Love Tractor doesn\u2019t allow itself to be hemmed in by genre boundaries. Around the Bend isn\u2019t surf rock. Vocals do show up here and there, but more often than not they\u2019re used as a textural element rather than a lyric delivery device. Hypnotic melodies develop over the course of refrains, and while it\u2019s very accessible, the music is inventive, too, rewarding close and repeated listens.<\/p>\n

The production values do place the record in its time, but that\u2019s not a bad thing. The snare reverb isn\u2019t overdone, which alone sets the record apart from much of what got released into the college rock universe of the early 1980s. And subtlety \u2013 a quality not often found in great supply \u2013 is the watchphrase throughout Around the Bend<\/i>. The group\u2019s guitarists and keyboardist entwine their melodic lines in a way that suggests a mindset not too removed from that of Television. Love Tractor\u2019s unassuming approach seems to imply, \u201cHere we are, doing our thing. You\u2019re welcome to listen, but we\u2019re not going to bug you about it.\u201d And if you know what\u2019s good for you, you will indeed listen.<\/p>\n

This new release also includes a 12×12 liner note sheet (with a bold header imploring \u201cPlease Read…\u201d), featuring glowing and articulate reminiscences from Dave Schools (Widespread Panic), Vanessa Briscoe Hay (Pylon), The dB\u2019s Peter Holsapple, members of 10,000 Maniacs and three members of Love Tractor itself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Forty years on, it\u2019s too easy to forget just how fertile a creative ground was the Athens, Georgia music scene of the early \u201880s. Sure, everybody knows about R.E.M. and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26357,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,50,62,64,65,73],"tags":[4807],"class_list":["post-26356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-instrumental","category-new-wave","category-rawk","category-reissue","category-review","category-vinyl","tag-love-tractor","cat-40-id","cat-50-id","cat-62-id","cat-64-id","cat-65-id","cat-73-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26356"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26356\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26378,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26356\/revisions\/26378"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}