Love Tractor - The Sky At Night (2001)

After sitting out the whole of the 1990s (if only U2 had possessed such good judgment), Love Tractor made an unexpected and quite welcome return to recording in 2001 with The Sky at Night, their first album in 12 years. If you're an old fan wondering "Do they still sound like they used to?," the answer is "not exactly." On The Sky at Night, Mark Cline, Michael Richmond, and Armisted Wellford (drummer Andrew Carter opted not to return) have moved back to the primarily instrumental approach of their first two albums over the poppier, more song-oriented attack of This Ain't No Outer Space Ship; while most of the songs have vocals, a significant minority do not, and as in their earlier work, literal meaning has taken a back seat to atmospherics. And the group's emphasis on the guitar has faded a bit; keyboards are more prominent than on any Love Tractor album of the past, with a slower, more measured sound taking the place of the more urgent attack dictated by rhythm guitars. But the band's intelligence, their understated wit, and their slightly skewed but irresistible, melodic approach have all survived unscathed, and while "Christ Among the Children" and "Balthus (The Old Clothesline)" recall the sound of Love Tractor's best-known work, "Bright," "Tree People," and "Antarctica" show them moving into a more ambient, impressionistic direction that suits them nicely. The Sky at Night suggests Love Tractor won't be covering any Gap Band tunes again any time soon, but they've also learned how to take the approach Brian Eno mapped out on Music for Films and make it both fun and emotionally expressive -- no small thing.