Themes From Venus

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Themes From Venus album cover
Album Information

Total Tracks: 12   Total Length: 53:59

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Athens Americana

KEVINLAPP2000

This was a great album from the day I heard it. I had seen Love Tractor's name all over the concert listings in the late 80s and early 90s in Chapel Hill and finally got around to seeing them. Very unique spacy sound that matures in this album. Only San Francisco in the 60s can surpass the quality of bands that came from Athens in the 80s. Nothing like it since...not even Seattle.

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Will never leave my player

GroovyTrucker

This album is a masterpiece, and I don't say that about every album. Don't give up on it when you hear the opening to "I Broke My Saw" because it just grooves the more you listen to it. The title track's changes just flow effortlessly into each other. "Crash" shows just how a saxophone can be a lead instrument in a modern band. "Satan's New Wave Soul Losers" (yes that's the real title-the CD rerelease shortens it) is a smack at subliminal backwards-masking. "Crystal World" is a perfect interlude, but get ready for "Venice" which just rocks! Pay attention at the end for the gondolier! If you close your eyes during "Nova Express" you can almost imagine yourself on a space train. "Here Come The Cops" is a reworking of "Country Club" from the extra tracks of "This Ain't No Outerspace Ship". Of the bonus tracks-"Crash (instrumental)" is the better of the two. You can really hear the song's structure without the vocals distracting you. Get this album. Savor it. Love it. Buy it flowers.

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eMusic Features

Scene: Athens, Georgia, 1980s-2000
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Scene: Athens, Georgia, 1980s-2000

By Andy Battaglia, eMusic Contributor

The idyllic little town of Athens, Ga., really does identify with kudzu and rusty train trestles and a surfeit of weird and endearing Southern-gothic charm—all the hallmarks that came to greet it after myths of its music scene started to spread. That began to happen in the early 1980s, when R.E.M. found an audience beyond crowds of fellow Georgians crammed into beery parties at discarded churches and clubs. When it came out in 1983, the… more »

They Say All Music Guide

After the relative polish of This Ain’t No Outerspace Ship — dominated by concise, hooky songs and plenty of vocals — Love Tractor took a bit of a step backwards on Themes From Venus, which would prove to be the band’s final album (at least prior to their reunion in 2001). The tunes on Themes From Venus are longer and less structured than those on Outerspace Ship, the grooves are at once loopier and more prominent, and while most of the songs have vocals, the words take a definite back seat to the music. In a way, it sounds like a return to the good old days of Around the Bend, except that Love Tractor haven’t given up anything they gained along the way — the band sounds a whole lot tighter and more muscular than they did in their earlier days, and when they hit a groove, they cover a lot of territory they never would have dreamed of exploring only a few years before. If This Ain’t No Outerspace Ship made Love Tractor sound like the world’s smartest party band, then Themes From Venus suggested they’d taken a few more classes and learned even more about groove. Themes From Venus closed the book on Love Tractor (at least for a while), with the group sounding louder and prouder than when they started, but just as willfully eccentric and charmingly witty — would that every band could manage such a feat. – Mark Deming

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