New Yo La Tengo

oh man, i wonder how ira of all people would take an "80s kinks" comparison.

ok, he'd probably take it by showing his "no 80s kinks were great!" mixtape.

YLT different in their members recognizing their own vox limitations and working w/in them beautifully imo, generally avoiding cracked "plaintive" caterwauling.

though in the past i think they did that a bit more.

also the difference between a thrice-divorced guy and his brother saying everything was better before and a married for decades guy and his wife saying they've got some awesome old shit on dvd

difference songwriting-wise, i mean

i was sort of ruminating on my own there w/r/t their place in "indie" but that's also otm w/r/t to the kinks

xp: electro-p-ura is my fave too. i saw them live a little later in berlin on a hot summer night. the place, the knaack club was packed, sweat was running from the walls, we were pretty close to the stage. ira almost melded with his guitar and became a new creature. he coaxed noisy feedback, sweet tunes, psychedelic drones, a whole cosmos of sounds out of the instrument. that night he was god. someone mentioned that he is about 55 today. no wonder that his music really feels insipid and weary these days. the thrill is gone.

^ this is/sounds OTM. Electr-O-Pura is my favorite too, but the show I saw on the Painful tour will be forever etched in my memory. Hearing "Sudden Organ" emerge from the massive feedback/looped wreckage of the "Out The Window" breakdown was like witnessing a sunrise for the first time.

he is about 55 today. no wonder that his music really feels insipid and weary these days

i am going to insert my insipid AARP card in you.

His age is irrelevant, but his knack for making tunes stick isn't.

i think age is relevant, especially in rock music. there are few good albums by people over 60 except maybe some blues men. but let's not get further into this, yo la tengo really should retire by now. otherwise they'll become the rolling stones of indie rock.

dubious comparison on a dozen levels

haha, seriously. making me think of that horrible "Sonic Youth, please break up" article.

because listening to the new one makes one rethink if this kind of hollowness wasn't already incrusted in the old albums which i used to love. there is this nagging doubt coming up. maybe they were never good at all. they should be able to judge themselves and not release stuff which is below their standard. but maybe they aren't. do they need the money? that would be an excuse i could accept.

*hugs*

wow that is brutal!

do they need the money? that would be an excuse i could accept.

while i don't doubt they enjoy what they do, i think it worth remembering that a professional musician is not just an artist but someone that makes their living by playing music. while i find their last decade of music to be less engaging than the one before it, i don't begrudge it and wish they'd evaporate just because i think they've stagnated.

"I wish they'd stop doing this thing that I stopped paying attention to years ago!"

it's cool if you're not into what they're doing now, but ... chill pill?

the new one isn't hollow. it's loose

Man, "Painful"-era YLT was just soooo good.

Still don't own it. Saving myself!

It's really good, Alfred. "Electropura" and "Heart" are fine, but so scattershot compared to the perfect concision that is "Painful."

Weird that President Yo La Tengo doesn't pop up here. I've always thought that was their peak. Electropura and surrounding albums also up there...

I'd go with Painful too--the big doubles have great peaks, but I love almost every song on Painful. Looking forward to the new one; will be content with two or three great songs.

i don't think fade is amazing or anything, but it's certainly not embarrassing. did james steal alex in mainhattan's gf or something?

Man, "Painful"-era YLT was just soooo good.

― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, January 16, 2013 4:05 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Still don't own it. Saving myself!

TS: Yo La Tengo's "I Heard You Looking" vs Yo La Tengo's "Blue Line Swinger"

been here too long jeez

Weird that President Yo La Tengo doesn't pop up here. I've always thought that was their peak. Electropura and surrounding albums also up there...

i have been meaning to bring up President - it's a solid album and i almost wonder if people underrate it since most people who hopped on in the 90s first heard sandwiched with New Wave Hot Dogs. "Barnaby, hardly Working" is really the blueprint for a lot of what was to come.

I first heard President on the CD with New Wave; love President, have middling-at-best interest in NWHD.

yeah nwhd only sounds good compared to ride the tiger

there are some gems on those early records though:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJqrglXJgXw

guess i'm just the resident ylt fanboy here, but i can't find a song on Fade I don't like.

i'll second "fanboy" status. if "well you better" and "ohm" and "paddle forward" are hollow, money-grabbin' tunes...well, i guess i'm a soul-less capitalist schmuck.

There's very little YLT I don't like. There's a whole lot more, however, I never feel a need to hear more than once, unfortunately.

Hessischer Jung, are you crying
Over YLT being unsatisfying?
Tunes, like the works of bands, you
With your unfunky Germanness care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep and know why.
Now no matter, Piefke, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What héart héard of, ghóst guéssed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Alex in Mainhattan you mourn for.

couple weeks later and this album has worn through in places but is still great!

it is funny to have a yo la tengo album where it ends and I think "oh it's over already?" wonder if there's more material and there won't be 3+ years in between records this time?

three word username
who might you be?
your poem is not lame
but unfunky like me

we are all getting older
and we look for bands
to lean on their shoulder
and not following trends

ylt, i wanted to age with thee
you seemed perfect to my ear
but it wasn't meant to be
now it's all so clear

we don't know tomorrow
neither you nor me nor georgia
right now ylt cause only sorrow
but the hope dies last, i tell ya

I'm really liking "Fade", a lot more than I thought I would based on some of the things I'd been reading about it. Sure, they've stopped trying to break new ground, but even YLT on autopilot is better than just about any other band when they've reached that "comfortable" phase of their career and have supposedly stopped trying to be inventive.

The band will turn 30 next year.

The strings and horns on "Before We Run" makes me think they are slowly turning into Lambchop.

― Jah Creature (WilliamC), Wednesday, January 16, 2013 11:40 AM (1 week ago)

At the Maxwell's holiday party I said hi to Ira and in our conversation he mentioned Lambchop as the only current release he could say he's a big fan of. Feel free to make fun of me for assuming I cornered him to ask really boring questions.

Very interesting video (which stars Mac McCaughan as the singer/guitarist), seems at first to suggest that "I'll Be Around" is the third part of a trilogy ("Deeper Into Movies"->"I'm On My Way"->"I'll Be Around") but by the end it's essentially a visual text montage of many of their lyrics (and other texts?) superimposed over a nice home cooking session (which sounds ridiculous but it works):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?fv=KJyjzHIgqr4

Interview about new vid here on bonappetit.com!
http://www.bonappetit.com/blogsandforums/blogs/badaily/2013/01/yo-la-tengo.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJyjzHIgqr4

This:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNCc561-KLQ

really annoying to listen to this with the asshole and his expensive camera clicking away every 30 seconds. his flickr stream is going to be AWESOME though.

thankfully it seems he gets all the shots he needs during the first 10mins. my blood pressure has leveled. carry on.

Paddle Foward is so lovely.

This finally showed up in my mailbox this morning--seemed to take forever. I've only played it once in the car so far (once through, and my two favourite songs a second time).

"Ohm"'s pretty good as an opener; I like the music, the vocal not as much. The next four songs more or less went right past me--one I disliked. Maybe they'll get better. The first really great song for me is "I'll Be Around," the beginning of which makes me think of CSNY's "4 + 20."(Speaking of whom, I think they've done that before--like Neil Young, they'll take a title from some other great song.) And from that point forward, I love everything. I think that last half, #6-10, is one of the most beautiful stretches on any of their albums. I don't like Yo La Tengo when they try to write overly cute pop songs, and I don't like them much when they try to sound noisy. (For anyone who despises Yo La Tengo and finds the last half of that sentence really funny, it's true--sometimes they try to sound noisy.) Really the one thing I love about them--and I think they consistently do this better than any band ever--is their gift for a kind of formless beauty that's like a guitar-based version of Another Green World or something, with words that just fill in the space between (for me; I know they write songs about marriage and domesticity and such).

Yeah, this is really growing on me, especially the back half as clemeza points out. "Two Trains" really hits a sweet spot for me, I think it might secretly be the best song on here.

eir gift for a kind of formless beauty that's like a guitar-based version of Another Green World or something

well said. This album doesn't quite hit the mark but certainly your observation is true of most of their other albums. I've kept "Ohm," "Paddle Forward," and that last lovely horn-anchored track.