Yo La Tengo 03.10.09

Originally published in The Gargoyle, October 20, 2009. It's not a great write-up, but it's not terrible, and since The Garg doesn't publish online, I figured I'd put it here for posterity's sake.

Yo La Tengo are like indie rock's official journeymen. Guitarist Ira Kaplan, drummer Georgia Hubley - also his wife - and their buddy James McNew have been doing their thing for something like 25 years now, and while they've never been huge, they're dearly beloved by their core contingency of music geeks - if the audience at The Opera House on October 3rd is any indication, there appears to be a correlation between poor eyesight and loving YLT. My guess is that YLT lets us indulge in a sort of fantasy life - Ira's just like you! Awkward, pretty much styleless, and totally obsessed with pop music. Except that he's the world's greatest noise rock guitarist and gets to live a blissful, bohemian life playing in a band with the girl of his dreams. We should all be so lucky.

The truth is, Yo La Tengo have been kind of boring for the past decade; since 2000's romantic And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out, their output has mostly been insincere pastiche. Pleasant and likable, but Ira used to wear his heart on his sleeve like no one else. Painful and Electr-O-Pura might have been a bit abrasive, but that noise served to take Ira's awkward-Jewish-nerd emotions and give it muscle and soul. The way that fuzzy noise riff running through "From a Motel 6" pounds at your ears is basically the very feeling of romantic desperation, and "I Heard You Looking" is the sound of longing at its sweetest.

Of course they didn't play either of those songs. Sadly but expectedly, their setlist was too heavily weighted towards recent material. Sure, at this point they've more than earned their creative freedom to do whatever the hell they want, but funky as it was, did anyone really come out to see the band run through "Mr. Tough"? On the other hand, the unquestionable show highlight was from their newest album, Popular Songs: the simultaniously towering and swooning "More Stars Than There Are In Heaven", where Ira mumbles about walking hand in hand as the glittering noise swells and swells for something like fifteen minutes until it envelops everything with love and hearing loss. It was magical.

So there's the dilemma. Endure yet another middling funk imitation like "Periodically Double or Triple" for the sake of a beautiful rendition of "Stockholm Syndrome", complete with un-freakin-believable Ira skronk solo? It's probably worth it. For individuals of the right temperament, Yo La Tengo become a particular way of seeing the world. Sometimes things are dull, sure, and your music is just old stuff on the radio...but then Ira freaks out, does unimaginable things to his guitar with his back to the audience, his heart is broken, the feedback just about reaches the breaking point, and just when it's all about to get unbearable, Georgia slides over to Ira and coos, "You can have it all," and true love is real and there really are happy endings after all. Cynics need not apply, Yo La Tengo are for lovers.