Album Review
The following review was done by a friend of mine who really rawks in the whole rock journalism thing. He really should get his own blog and build it up to something like Pitchfork but not so bitchy lah... Anyway, Yo La Tengo is a pretty interesting band. Though I am rather more wary of all these indie bands nowadays, a great indie band is just slightly easier to find than a honest politician.
Yo La Tengo
Summer Sun [Matador]
Rating: 9.0
Long lauded and adored by the indie minions,
Yo La Tengo has mellowed admirably through the years into a seasoned class act.
Summer Sun is the trio�s tenth full length record (excluding a bunch of EPs, unofficial records and other compiled confections), and it�s very refreshing to hear than
Ira Kaplan,
James McNew and
Georgia Hubley are still making great music together so naturally with their inimitable charms intact. Their latest album continues in a similarly slow vein to their last, 2000�s
And Then Nothing Turns Itself Inside Out, but do not mistake the comfortable nuances in these new songs to be a dreaded case of creative indifference. Ranging from the ridiculous to the sublime, the gentle love songs on
Summer Sun are quiet gems that yield themselves to the soft cells of a dawdling nostalgic bliss. The blurred cover photo of the band and the album title both nicely telegraph the moods of these songs: warm, lazy and faintly beaming with contentment.
Remember that it wasn�t that long ago when
Kaplan was still slotting in his noisy guitar solos and long keyboard jams into their introverted pop like a
Sonic Youth disciple. In contrast, the latter
Yo La Tengo albums are of a softer shade, and sound like they have a lot more room to breathe. The fading drones of the first track Beach Party Tonight sets the right tone, fleeting thoughts and emotions piping through the muggy air like a lost flying saucer. On
Summer Sun, a sense of idle quietude is all around. With the trio focusing more on mood and texture, these new songs are carefully crafting their own intimate corners to ruminate about love and longing, shifting between saccharine pop melodies (Little Eyes, Season Of The Shark) and the heart�s shadowy reflections. On the latter,
Kaplan continues to write some of his most wonderful songs about his dark premonitions: Nothing But You And Me serves up stammering rumbles of keyboards and upright bass as a counterpoint to his bleak lyrics, while Don�t Have To Be So Sad loops agile pianos and a shuffling drum machine beat glued together to his lugubrious lament.
While
Summer Sun is an album that finds
Yo La Tengo at their most uniformly expressive, there are still a few subtle changeups lurking under its smoldering momentum. In fact there is a smarmy funkiness to the album that no other
Yo La Tengo album can claim to, rendering tracks like Winter A-Go-Go and Moonrock Mambo with some esoteric sort of carnival rhythms.
James McNew throws in a rare composition Tiny Birds, a jazzed-up number with a really nice bohemian vibe about it (and also reminding us that this is a band that has very recently covered
Sun Ra). And for an album that offers it share of emotional crutches and a bulwark against the frightening things that keep us all afraid (�Do you need someone to hide behind? I don�t mind/ Do you need to be alone to unwind? That�s alright�,
Kaplan sings on Season Of The Shark),
Summer Sun ends on an affecting high note with their tender cover of the
Alex Chilton classic Take Care. And in their unassuming manner,
Yo La Tengo has cast its ethereal spell on everyone again and delivered another truly memorable listening experience.
[Keith]
To subscribe to his inconstant rock album review emailer, email him at spirit_anem@hotmail.com
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