A Rough Guide to Yo La Tengo

What follows is as much a fan’s guide as a Rough Guide. Yo La Tengo combine a wonderful indie aesthetic with a huge range of output. Listen to Fakebook back to back with The Sound of the Sounds of Science and you won’t believe you’re listening to the same group. Tim Buckley had a similar range but his was more developmental: Yo La Tengo can swap around seemingly at will. The last couple of records, And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out and Summer Sun both contained songs that could fit on either record. Yet, whatever they are playing, there is a clear sense of identity running through them and an absolute love of the music. Like the best bands they come across as complete fans, they exist to make music they like and if they make money along the way, fine.

Yo La Tengo (Spanish for the baseball fielders call "I've got it!") comprise singer/guitarist Kaplan, his wife, drummer/vocalist Georgia Hubley and, for the last ten years, Bassist James McNew. They were formed in 1984 . Their first record, 1986's Ride the Tiger, featured Dave Schramm on guitar and bassist Mike Lewis . This sounds like a debut should – unsure, enthusiastic and ultimately a likeable curio.
By New Wave Hot Dogs they were a trio: Ira and Georgia, this time with Stephen Wichnewski on bass. Here the Velvet Underground comparisons kick in – it included a cover of , "It's Alright (The Way That You Live); ". I still think this is less than essential, although a more confident record than their debut: the songs sound stronger and the group are getting more of a sense of character.
As they developed Yo La Tengo began playing with different interpretations of songs, often one full on electric thrash and one quiet, semi acoustic exploration. 1989's New Wave Hot Dogs , opening with the droning squalls of "Barnaby, Hardly Working,", later given a quiet working over on Fakebook. It also contained two versions of the track "The Evil That Men Do", one picking out the melody, the other tearing it to pieces. President Yo La Tengo and New Wave Hot Dogs are available as a budget priced single cd, well worth a look once you’ve got some of the later recordings but not really the place to start.
Some feel that Fakebook,is their best record: it is also the least characteristic in that, until Summer Sun, it was the only record where the noise was completely reigned in. It’s a wonderful acoustic folk-pop record. The sleeve notes are tremendous giving a real sense of this record as a homage to their influences. There’s a great cover of “Oklahoma USA” by the Kinks “Ira’s all-time faves” – YLT later played as Davies’s backing band on a US tour.- and other wonderfully obscure covers from their record collections. Other great tracks: the Flamin Groovies’ "You Tore Me Down”, “Griselda ,”Here Comes My Baby” by the Tremeloes, and Emulsified which, to quote the notes, is “the handiwork of Rex Garvin and the Mighty Cravers, and we found it on the mighty swell compilation “At The Party” which no record collection should be without”. The record also includes a handful of pretty fine new songs and the aforementioned re-take of "Barnaby, Hardly Working". I wouldn’t want to be without this cd!

By the release of 1993's Painful they’d signed to current label Matador and been joined by James McNew. Again the range of songs is the key. The record begins and ends with very different versions of "Big Day Coming" —one moody piece of shoe gazing, the other guitar led rock—, From a “Motel 6” sounds like a poppy My Bloody Valentine, there’s a cover of The Only Ones’ “The Whole of the Law in the style of the third Velvets record and a huge riff led closer that builds not unlike “Cortez the Killer” to a squall that shows why Ira has been described, rather delightfully, as the jewish Jimi Hendrix. This is a record packed full of good moments but it doesn’t really hold together as a piece.

Electr-o-Pura (1995) is a similar record but with better songs. "Tom Courtenay" is a glorious guitar pop song, “Flying Lesson” is Joy Division with Kevin Shields on board, “Pablo and Andrea” one of Geogia’s sweetest vocals, “Bitter End” is a fabulous tune -MBV with the Velvets on board -, “Blue Line Swinger” a huge, wonderful guitar riff collapsing into distortion and melancholy female vocals. I know this isn’t very objective, but this is one of the five best rock recordings EVER – utterly glorious in every way possible. When I saw them last year Ira played part of it spinning in circles holding the guitar by its neck and it still sounded like heaven!! Again, though, a record of parts rather than a really coherent whole.


As I mentioned above, YLT have, on many occasions, been compared to the Velvet Underground: surges of guitar noise, drone rock, then sweet, melodic female led pop songs. YLT did, in fact, play the Velvet Underground in the 1996 film “I Shot Andy Warhol”.” I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One sounds like the Velvets would have sounded if they’d formed 30 years later. There are long noisy, kraut rock improvisations, great pop songs, the beginnings of using beats behind songs, partuicularly on “My Autumn Sweater” – a free cd with the initial pressing featured remixes by Tortoise, (Greek symbol)siq and Kevin Shields- a Jesus and Mary Chain like cover of the Beach Boys’ “Little Honda”, acoustic tunes with a samba beat, countryish tunes – yet this time the record does hang together as a unified whole: I always want to listen to all of this rather than just dip into my fave bits.

And Then the Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out followed in early 2000 building on the use of drum machines from “My Autumn Sweater” and showed a quieter, more reflective mood developing with songs focusing more on relationship and the quirks of adult life as well as taking a title from an episode of the Simpsons in “ Let’s Save Tony Orlando’s House”. The key track here, the 17 minute “Night Falls on Hoboken”, starts as a low key acoustic ballad then drifts into ten minutes of mellow feenback underpinned by a simple, hypnotic rhythm. The Sounds of the Sounds of Science, written as soundtrack to the undersea documentaries of French filmmaker Jean Painleve and available from the band’s website, picks up from this offering a series of ambient soundscapes, a little more experimental than on the regular cds.. ( If you’re ordering this the Merry Xmas from YLT is worth including in the order –“Santa Clause Goes Modern” worth the price alone .)

2003’s Summer Sun is in some ways on a straight line from “Autumn Sweater” through Nothing Turned itself. It could be viewed as the group settling into middle age: very little noise and a definite jazzy tone in evidence. This follows the “Nuclear War” ep with three different versions of the Sun Ra song and the quirky sound of a kids choir singing “It’s a motherf***er”! The record creates a very laconic mood and occasional lapses into noodling but is full of great songs and, again, if you get the “Today is the Day” ep you get a fab loud version of “Today is the Day” to go alongside the mellow album version.

There are all sorts of other oddities: a collaboration with Jad Fair, some collections of out takes and b side. If you want to get some samples, concert footage and hear some of their more unusual covers – “You Sexy Thing” is particularly fine! - go to the sunsquashed website or the band's own site

[This message was edited by kj burrell on Tue 08 June 2004 at 21:50.]