New Yo La Tengo

Are you kidding me — I buy Yo La Tengo records for new age drones, free jazz and lengthy psych jams.

― tylerw, Saturday, March 17, 2018 3:49 PM (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Just can't imagine a person going "you know what I'm in the mood for? Some droney drifty ambient. Let's see...Tangerine Dream? Nope. Stars of the Lid? Nope. Oh HERE WE GO it's the new YO LA TENGO. Bingo!"

well, now you can imagine it

I buy yo la tengo albums for all of the above. Although tbh I wasn't that into atntiio or summer sun or the 1st one. I probably would go along with painful and electro-pura as best. I love blue line swinger and that's quite long iirc

I'm enjoying this quite a lot, the atmospherics are really lovely even though the songs don't really stand out, though Here You Are is a highlight. It holds together really well as an album, the sequencing is excellent. It kinda reminds me of Talk Talk in places.

I don't think it's as good as Fade (which is excellent and underrated) but certainly better than Popular Songs as far as their recent-ish albums go. I'm glad they can still manage to find new variations on their sound, it feels much more free-form than their previous quiet albums.

Fade is definitely excellent and underrated

Is it? It got properly rated at the time (Pitchfork and Christgau loved it)

Maybe "undeservedly forgotten" more than "underrated" then, but that's inevitable with any band with a big discography. A few are bound to fall through the cracks

Assembled and augmented by McNew from a trove of experiments and works-in-progress...

Did not know this about the new record.

why people buy YLT albums & what they're looking for: this is why I love I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass the most. Bookended by two amazing stone jams, the first funky, the second desperate and soaring. And in between, a diversity of material similar to The White Album: beautiful ballads like I Feel Like Going Home, Black Flowers, The Weakest Part... genre experiments like The Race is On Again and Sometimes I Don't Get You, and killer pop songs like Beanbag Chair and Mr. Tough.

was behind ira in a food line last night, forgot to tell him to lose the noise jams

you nutters

This record is pretty much a YLT record as one could expect and I'm having a hard time understanding the direction of this thread.

This band - they’re good but they don’t have the performance or songwriting chops to last 10 + albums, jeez.

I liked it: https://www.spin.com/2018/03/yo-la-tengo-theres-a-riot-going-on-review/

calsnores

― mookieproof, Tuesday, February 5, 2013 9:32 PM (five years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is why I love I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass the most.

― flappy bird, Monday, March 19, 2018 9:03 AM (five days ago)

lol!

Really? You’re going to put them in the same league as Steely Dan or something? What a ducking joke

I feel like most ppl [not some of the ppl on this thread, obv.] only need one or two YLT albums. Take your pick, I guess. I don’t blame any band for soldiering on, though.

that advice goes for most artists

It makes me angry that my ex favourite band degenerates into rubbishness. I already wrote about it a couple of years ago. How can a once dear band become so generic and uninteresting? This is bad computer music without any interesting turns. They have totally lost it. They are not even shadows of themselves anymore, they are their own gravediggers. I cannot by any means understand what happened to this band. RIP YLT.

What are some of your other favorite bands?

Joy division
Giant sand
the smiths
Gun club
The breeders
Low
The House of love
Pixies
Cocteau twins
My bloody valentin
velvet underground

Just to name a few. Why?

It's true that the Pixies have sustained excellence well into their 50s.

Thx – just curious! I’m always interested...

I mean how many Painful and I Can Hear the Heart can a band make in a career? The usual career arc of a good band usually just goes from acclaimed records to a bunch of good not great follow ups at some point; the good not great records can feel great if it is exactly the type of stuff you enjoy, in which case YLT still 100% does for me. If it doesn't then its okay, but holding artists to a lofty standards 20 years after their peak seems truly unfair to me.

Xp. There are lots of other bands i love eg the wipers, the blue aeroplanes, the chills, roxy music etc.

"bad computer music" whuh? What does that mean in this context, or at all?

I've only just started listening to the album--does it become a Looper album or something, later on?

I like this new one

Yo La Tengo is a band where I literally like *the sound* of them playing together

obv some songs are better than others but ultimately they are kinda almost an ambient indie rock band to me

"bad computer music"
I mean that the last album sounds very deterministic. It is just plodding along. Or am i missing something?

They have been so varied for so many years. Starting with indie guitar rock with a folkish background, changing to more noisy stuff, doing open space night time music. Whatever they touched before roundabout 2005 was excellent. I even loved sounds of the sounds of science. And the other soundtracks. But suddenly it was over. There was no more spark anymore. It would be better they'd stop doing music. Really.

Ambient is a good term to summarize their new stuff. That kind of music has never been my cup of tea.

maybe that's just it and they shouldn't stop playing music just because they ain't your cup of tea no more.

(i get a bit defensive with YLT)

I am lapsed fan of YLT who hasn't bought their last five or six records and they should just keep on doing what they are doing because they are excellent people and seem to be enjoying it

"Dream Dream Away" is the first thing that's really hitting me. . . So yeah, I think I go in for gauzy ambient droney YLT.

Ooh, "Shortwave," yes very nice, too. I think I'll probably end up doing for this album what I did for the last YLT album I bought ('Summer Sun') and whittle it down to a really strong 30 minute +/- album.

This could practically pass for a collab between My Bloody Valentine, Low, and the instrumental unit of the Cocteau Twins, so I'm surprised you're so opposed, Alex in Mainhattan. . . Personally I'm excited to hear them take certain aspects of the 'Nothing' sound and follow them to their logical ends. Kudos to a band of people in their (presumably) late 40s/early 50s for trying new things.

I think they're in their early 60s actually. However, James might be late 40s?

I'm kind of ending up on it being a misstep, even though I like it-interesting failures are some of my favorite records. 'Forever' is a good example of this, ambient doo-wop that sounds interesting on paper, but I can't even listen to all the way through.

YLT is one of my favorite bands, but there is usually accidental intelligence when bands do press tours, and the "Assembled and augmented" quote is somewhat related to the "going back to the basics" thread, meaning to me it has the feel of 'we didn't have enough songs'. That's reinforced by how demo-like I find stuff like 'Polynesia #1', which feels like a riff and placeholder lyrics. 'Shortwave' I love, but I hope they never subject an audience to 'Dream Dream Away', and then on the back half you get retread YLT in Esportes Casual ('Center of Gravity'), the aforementioned 'Forever' and then ambient-Isaac Hayes in 'Out of the Pool', and never has a pool sounded less fun.

I don't know, I've been wrong about YLT records before but then 'Popular Songs' never clicked, and never has.

Polynesia #1 is a cover actually

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zdmWAkZ2PM

the only albums of theirs that feel like missteps to me are Summer Sun and Popular Songs, which both just feel like lesser versions of the preceding albums.

ha, I'll probably get kicked out of Portland for not knowing that was a Michael Hurley song.

It makes me angry that my ex favourite band degenerates into rubbishness. I already wrote about it a couple of years ago. How can a once dear band become so generic and uninteresting?

dude really? Aging happens to all of us.

YLT have had a pretty stellar run, even if you cut them off in 2006. Great bands average 3-4 great records. They at least have that, arguably more.

having said that I have not listened to the new one (but will now), I am very much a lapsed fan. "The Crying of Lot G" is one of my favorite songs ever and I've already said which album I love the most. Becoming boring/generic 30 years into a career is unfortunately common. So it goes.

This is actually my favorite YLT album of the OOs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cgr8QrJVq6w&list=PLjX2iu_u1e981a7-GHEGSu4ka8dWbUwMj

(It's "Fuckbook" by the Condo Fucks, not sure why the embed isn't working)

Oh I like the new album. It sounds like they set out to make a spacious, atmospheric record and they succeeded. For as much as it "sounds like YLT" I don't think there is another album in their discography that is a better version of this particular thing. Maybe individual songs, but not whole albums.

I hope they never subject an audience to 'Dream Dream Away'

They did last night! Though if you're worried about the new songs (which sound great live), fear not, they're playing a quiet set followed by a loud set, with plenty of feedback and sudden organ freakouts from peak-form Ira, who remains music's goofiest boy. Last night included a particularly breathless run of Double Dare/Decora/Sugarcube/Pass the Hatchet (!). I was hoping for "What Chance Have I Got," my favorite new one, but "Mr. Tough" (and its helpfully reprised refrain) got the message across: all our joy is mere reprieve. Somewhat less subtle: encore cover of The Dead C's "Bad Politics." Anyway, I love love love this band and they've now played two of the best shows of my lifetime.

Also: James McNew was wearing a black t-shirt with the word FUM in small white lettering. I'm still wondering about this.

what does it mean?

i was at that show too... sudden organ was soooo good. and yep still baffled by james's shirt