Favorite (not Best) Yo La Tengo Album

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