Favorite (not Best) Yo La Tengo Album

And of course, remember to punch the bullet at the bottom-left corner of the album you're choosing here.

This is going to be fun when the results come up and the pics are gone and no one knows who won.

Though, in a way, it will be like all of us have won.

fakebook, no contest, for me. the three-album string from fakebook to painful is the main reason i love yo la tengo, but fakebook socked me in the gut with its pastel mysteries the first time i heard it and it's never really let up.

I never do this, so apologies in advance, but does anyone else really dislike Yo La Tengo? Or it is the preternatural a-holeness of Ira Kaplan that does it?

no. he's a mets fan.

rim shot (that's a single entendre)

"To clarify, I'm asking you to vote for your favorite album. Not the album you think is most consistent, accomplished, enduring or overall best. Just your favorite."

I don't really think there is a difference but I have heard people say this before

It's funny Yo La Tengo are probably the one band I'd have a clear answer for in terms of best vs. favorite album, but my choice isn't an option. Sounds of Science has always been an album I've never considered great, but for personal reasons (I have a full story about going to see it performed that I won't get into) and associations to time spent listening to it (often reading or drifting off into sleep); it has become one of my personal favorites.

I blame Electr-O-Pura for the fact that I never learned how to play a decent guitar solo in high school. I kept trying to skronk shit up.

This best vs. favorite shit is for the birds.

"oh this album has the best songs but my grandma died smoking a doob to this other one so I'd rather play that because it reminds me of dear old grandma."

^^^hahaha!

I'll be utterly predictable and pick the obvious choice here (i.e., the one Stephen no doubt meant would end up winning); the dreaded lurker's choice, as Geir would have it.

Voted for New Wave Hot Dogs because that record ruled the late '80s for me. Kinda drifted away after electro pura, and vaguely thought they'd released tons of records since - seems I've only missed 4 (maybe you've left some live shit/ comps out?)

This best vs. favorite shit is for the birds.

OTM. As usual, there is no difference.

I actually have no idea which Yo La Tengo album would be "the obvious critical favorite" -- shows how much I pay attention to the band. I will, say, though, that the first two album covers are far and away my favorites. So maybe I should vote for one of those. The other ones look really boring.

I'd assume the critical favorite is I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One they still get automatic four-star reviews in mags, but I haven't seen much And They Keep Getting Better reviews since Heart. Plus musically it really covers all the bases.

That's the one I meant (not sure about Stephen).

And They Still Keep Getting Better is a perfect Yo La album title.

And They Still Keep Getting Better So You Had Best Give Them At The Very Least Four Star Reviews Or They Will Trunce Your Ass, Hipster!

That's the one I meant (not sure about Stephen).

-- JN$OT, Tuesday, 18 September 2007 13:57 (39 minutes ago) Link

Yes, same album.

This is a fun question. Ride The Tiger's a sentimental favorite for me - my first trip to CBGB was a 1986 Dredd Foole/YLT/Mofungo show - but it never leaves the shelves. Is anyone going to rep for that? On the other hand Fakebook has gotten the most play in recent years because it's the most palatable to our kids (with Summer Sun a close second) but at the time it struck me as an awkward appeal for NPR acceptability.

I'm going with Painful because it was like a consolidation of so many things that they do great. It's the first one I'd give someone to expose them to YLT -- I think it also hinted at their next stage, though I admit I only know the Electro-Heart-Nothing era from the live shows, which have never let me down.

This is the first time I've looked at all 11 at once and it makes me realize - great records, not great record covers. Which one has the worst cover art? I'd take Painful on that poll too.

i like the covers to new wave hot dogs and may i sing with me (something about that umbrella). everything else is pretty crappy, agreed.

electr-o-pura. i saw them touring that album and i still consider that concert in the packed knaack club in berlin prenzlauer berg during a hot summer night the best concert i have ever seen. "blue line swinger" going on and on for ages. guitar bliss. the audience's and ira's sweat were condensing on the walls. and actually i think that electr-o-pura will win this poll. it would have won the same poll on ilm 5 years ago, for sure.

btw there is also the recent covers collection album from their annual cover concert missing. which was quite fun.

xpost - Yeah, those two and the latest one are their best. At least May I Sing With Me breaks out of the indie-picture cliche of obscuring the band's image.

btw there is also the recent covers collection album from their annual cover concert missing. which was quite fun.

-- alex in mainhattan, Tuesday, September 18, 2007 3:29 PM (57 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

I love that covers record, really entertaining, but I wanted to include only "proper" studio albums, and I don't think the average fan would consider that to be one.

The first one I bought was Electro-Pura but I think Painful might just edge it as favourite. Mainly because of Nowhere Near which I think is my fave song by them.

This is the first time I've looked at all 11 at once and it makes me realize - great records, not great record covers. Which one has the worst cover art? I'd take Painful on that poll too.

I think it's rags vs riches ... "Ride the Tiger", "Painful", and "And Then Nothing Turned ..." have fantastic covers, "I Can Hear the Heart ..." is pretty good, and the rest blow.

'new wave hot dogs' has a cover that looks like some forgotten jazz flautist's early-'70s soul-jazz thing so it wins for me.

I loved the four before I Can Hear the Heart, and then loved that one strictly by what I heard through the floor from a housemate blasting it downstairs (I must have been pretty broke). I can only recommend the best-of in good conscience, but does that even have "Detouring America With Horns"? Fakebook is pretty nice, though. So that one.

bump

(sorry)

Genius + Love = Yo La Tengo

...if only for the phoned-in vocal on "Speeding Motorcycle"

President, because it concisely contains everything that they did well. I've always been bored by Painful and ICHTHBAO(and, in fact, most everything else of theirs aside from Electr-o-pura). I have them filed with Sonic Youth as "well intentioned married couples who really ought to be operating a charitable music-centered foundation rather than recording new music."

Genius + Love = Yo La Tengo

...if only for the phoned-in vocal on "Speeding Motorcycle"

-- christoff, Wednesday, 19 September 2007 19:18 (47 minutes ago) Link

I was introduced to YLT with May I Sing With Me and though I've liked much of their output a great deal, nothing will top my love for "Detouring America With Horns". Always hated Electr-O-Pura, even though they were probably at their peak as live performers on that tour.

I think there's been representation for almost every YLT album already in the comments...nice.

Inspired by this I pulled out President for the first time in a while, expecting it to sound tinny and weedy like so many other albums of the time. And in fact it still sounds great. Very happy surprise. Best Lou Reed album of the 80's.

bumpity bump for the weekend voters

Electr-o-pura

Painful

I have to make sure And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out gets proper dues. It's not as immediately gratifying as most of their other albums, but then again, I don't think any of the others open themselves up as fully after repeated plays, either. On ATNTIIO they perfected the hypnotic melancholy that they tried to replicate, not as successfully, on Summer Sun and 1/2 of the new one.

If the rest of May I Sing with Me were as great as "Upside-Down", I'd have to go with that one, but as it is, I'd have to go with ATNTIIO>Painful>ICHTHBAO>others

<i>The Sounds of the Sounds of Science</i> is my favorite - I wish they'd do more of those murky, atmospheric Krautrocking grooves. I voted for <i>Electr-O-Pura</i>.

I don't think any of the others open themselves up as fully after repeated plays, either. On ATNTIIO they perfected the hypnotic melancholy that they tried to replicate, not as successfully, on Summer Sun and 1/2 of the new one.

If the rest of May I Sing with Me were as great as "Upside-Down", I'd have to go with that one

-- Z S, Friday, September 21, 2007 5:17 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Link

Both highly OTM!

Inside-Out was a brilliant album for them, capping an excellent '90s run with something truly different than they'd attemped before and really *really* succeeding with it.

and "Upside Down" is one of the hidden gems in their catalog.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

http://sfj.abstractdynamics.org/archives/24%20hours%205.jpg

gah

http://sfj.abstractdynamics.org/archives/24%20hours%205.jpg

On ATNTIIO they perfected the hypnotic melancholy that they tried to replicate, not as successfully, on Summer Sun and 1/2 of the new one.

for me they peaked with electr-o-pura, where they were at their most focused, least distracted, and most fearless. icsthbao definitely has its moments (particularly "autumn sweater" and "seeing into movies," but "green arrow" and "center of gravity" came dangerously close to self-parody, with the latter in particular bringing cloying cutesiness to the fore in a really off-putting way. atntiio sounded like a retreat; for the first time they sounded comfortable with their formula and decided to stay there. summer sun was a profound embarrassment, as absurdly pandering to their presumed fanbase as it's hard was to the who's. i haven't been able to bring myself to listen to the new one. i mean, at least the who took 24 years to get their shit together after it's hard, you know?

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

i KNEW the invisible album would win

I'm really surprised that Summer Sun did so well here!

slight usability problem with polls i see

It got mixed up with the Chicago album poll.

My guess:

I Can Hear the Heart 21
Painful 20
And Then Nothing 14
Electro-Pur-A 13
I Am Not Afraid of You 12

My guess

Ride The Tiger 21
Summer Sun 20
May I Sing With Me 14
ohhhh lord 2pac big please talk to this sucker cause they killing hip hop they taking the pain and struggle of life of hip hop the only thing we coulda express our minds and pain. and these suckers took it and made it look like garbage thats why we get judge so much cause these shit dont be making sence 13
I Can Hear The Heart 12

I'm kind of confused as I see album photos next to the numbers, and they appear to make sense. What are y'all seeing?

your guesses are wrong, electr-o-pura won, one vote ahead of and then nothing.... i am too lazy to check the other images.

have a look at the source and you'll see.

This all feels very surreal. I see:

I Can Hear 21
Electro 20
And Then Nothing 14
Painful 13
Fakebook 12
Summer Sun 8

and so on...

oh, there was an image before electr-o-pura! what a pity.

concerning your question. we just see the votes:

21
20
14
13
12
8
2
1
1
1
0

it seems to be a firefox problem, as i can see the images using ie. the complete results for all other firefoxe users:

I Can Hear 21
Electro 20
And Then Nothing 14
Painful 13
Fakebook 12
Summer Sun 8
I Am Not Afraid Of You 2
May I Sing With Me 1
President Yo La Tengo 1
New Wave Hot Dogs 1
Ride The Tiger 0

Ride The Tiger at the bottom makes a lot of sense to me.

I admit I only know the Electro-Heart-Nothing era from the live shows

-- dad a, Tuesday, 18 September 2007 14:48 (6 days ago)

Looks like I have some catching up to do.

deluxe reish of painful -- extra painful -- coming out soon: matablog.matadorrecords.com/2014/10/21/coming-december-2-20th-anniversary-deluxe-editions-of-yo-la-tengos-painful/
i've kind of liked that the band hasn't gone nuts w/ deluxe reissues, but i've also been annoyed by it too. the bonus stuff here looks great.

YLT really nailed it in the 90s didn't they.

For sure.

There were some audiophile reissues at one point? Went for money so I didn't try to pick them up. Those could have come out years ago though.

Disappointed this (my fave YLT and one of my fave albums, ever) does not come with a pull-out uncropped poster of Neil Young's uneaten fries.

super deluxe version comes with one of the actual uneaten fries.

I've mentioned this on the relevant film thread, but some YLT people might not read those; if you haven't seen Boyhood, there's about a one-minute passage that uses "I'll Be Around" from the last album. The movie doesn't, for the most part, do a whole lot with music, but that minute is incredible.

Thought the revive would be for this.

I still have a band-aid sticker!

I have a band-aid sticker, too! Someone took a picture of me with Ira after a college show, then on the back he wrote: "A secret message: tuo pord."

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20017-yo-la-tengo-extra-painful/

There's a thread on the Steve Hoffman forums about how awful the pressing of the 2LP set is. One guy wrote to Matador and received the following response:

We're as frustrated by the situation as you are. Unfortunately it's become impossible to get consistent quality from any pressing plant these days.

United are as you note a prime culprit - they are so busy now that they are working 24-6, and until their new warehouse expansion is completed, they don't have sufficient space to allow the discs to dry properly before insertion.

However we have run into comparable quality control problems with Rainbo, RIP-V, QRP, MPO, Optimal and even Pallas - all of whom we have used for recent pressings.

Test pressings can be good and the actual LP can be bad. And there can be massive variations across batches.

Unfortunately this the downside of the vinyl revival - you have aging equipment that is non-replaceable, being strained far beyond the capacity for which it was originally designed, and often operated by people who were born in the age of the CD and the cassette and don't really understand what they're doing.

I'm copying in Dave Martin, who will help you with complementary replacements for all your defective discs, but please be aware that perfection (or even acceptable levels of surface noise) is hard to come by these days.

Best wishes,
Patrick

So does it sound bad across the board or are there just a lot of defective discs out there?

spun mine (on what is undoubtedly far from hoffman-forum approved equipment) last night and it sounded good to me.

Many are saying that the vinyl is pretty noisy. Technically, I don't think they're defective, just not up to standard (though a few people did say their copies were warped).

I've been burned twice on sketchy pressings for new vinyl (Iris DeMent, Bob Dylan), so I'm probably going with the CDs for this.

out of all the bonus material, the unreleased track "slow learner" is a standout -- even Ira wonders in the liners why they abandoned it.

Having spent many many years on the Matador label message board, I can tell you Patrick Amory is serious about the quality of vinyl and when shit comes out wrong he'll bend over backwards to apologize and try to make it right.

Painful is so perfect. I wonder if the reason people overrate "Electropura" and "Heart" so much (the former one of my least faves, the latter pretty good, but still) is that "Painful" and Matador/Atlantic distro finally broke them through. Like people who think "Boy With the Arab Strap" is the best B&S or whatever. It's what many people heard first.

Most insanely underrated: May I Sing with Me.

when i was in college and picked up ylt i never developed much interest in the records before 'painful', and a while after that even put aside the ones after 'nothing' (iirc because 'summer sun' just turned me off so badly). but for some reason i came to listen to 'heart' and 'electropura' regularly ever since, and kind of stopped with 'painful'. i don't know why.

the only albums of theirs I care about anymore are heart, electropura, and painful.

i wouldn't say i don't care about the rest, but yeah those three are on a different level

their best record is IANAOYAIWBYA

their entire 90s run is golden for me. everything else is silver.

The run of MISWM - Shaker - Painful - Electr-O-Pura is unfuckwithable, but those records barely hint at how overwhelming their mid-90s live shows were. I still remember my first YLT show (early 1994) like it was yesterday. It felt like what I imagine seeing the Who in late '68 must have been like: they had nothing to lose, everything to gain, and every possible risk was taken.

Painful

PAinful is the most thoughtfully written, most consistent, and best sequenced record YLT ever made or probably will ever make. I just love the record to pieces.

it is and will always be Ride the Tiger for me. first heard of them that year (guh, 37 years ago!) via the old legal-sized, stapled CMJs, (whom i’d fooled repeatedly into sending me copies for free) and somehow stumbled on a cut-out copy. i have *very* fond memories of falling asleep while it spun on my crappy panasonic all-in-one stereo — “alrock’s bells” and “living in the country” were especially peaceful as teenage me drifted off to sleep. sophomore year of college i got ira and georgia to sign that copy. ira was like “look at what this guy has!” as he passed it over to georgia. i keep meaning to track down dave schramm to send the cover to him for a signature. love it so much.

i still have a painful! bookmark. i only use it on the best books