Fat Truckers were one of the most promising group of the last year or two out of Sheffield, and one of my favorite bands this year. I looked forward to seeing their songs on compilations (and they were on many) and their various singles and remixes. So it goes without saying that I was looking forward to The First Fat Truckers Album.

Sadly, the album doesn't live up to the hype. Once you take away the two great singles, Superbike and Anorexic Robot, and then subtract the instrumentals (which seem to only add incidentally to the album) - Faversplimsoles - which reminds me of a song that my friend's band in high school did, but without their lyrics; and Roxys which borrows liberally from the Cabaret Voltaire song Nag Nag Nag and adds the piledriving sound of The Normal's T.V.O.D but doesn't retain either songs' crucial makeup, only ending up sounding like theme music to an Atari videogame put through a distortion box - and you get 6 songs to check out. The first song on the album is a bit of a joke song called Teenage Daughter, and they just keep repeating those two words for four minutes. Lock & Load in fact sounds like it would've sounded better as an instrumental.

The end result for me is there are only two songs which I will end up loving from this album. I Love Computers is a damn fine song which reminds me of Babybird. It's a really sweet song. The other song I like is the only one with guitars: Fix It, the last song on the album shows that Fat Truckers can rock - sounding like that brand of 80s rock we know and love from New Zealand found on labels like Flying Nun. It remains to be seen if Fix It is a novelty rock tune or a sound to be mined in the future.

I'm holding out hope that since they didn't include my favorite Fat Truckers' song, Down In Motion which can be found on the Northern Electronic compilation, that Fat Truckers have another album up their sleeve, which will leave this one in the dust.