Yo La Tengo – Popular Songs
The last Yo La Tengo album, the brilliantly-titled I am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass, sounded something like a greatest hits album, despite being full of new songs. It reminds me in that sense of Tom Waits’ Mule Variations, particularly in way that the strange sensation this aspect of the record generated meant that it took me a long time to realise just how good it was in its own right.
Again with this one there is a sense of touching all the more familiar YLT bases, which again makes the album come across just a little as a Yo La Tengo compilation consisting entirely of songs which you rather inexplicably didn’t hear when they were originally released.
The lush orchestration of opener Here to Fall is perhaps the biggest surprise, although the Inspiral Carpets-style organ on Nothing to Hide is also a little queer. I was just settling down to listen to a cosy, safe and familar album when that kicked in, and it’s pretty subtle so I don’t know why it would have surprised me, but it did. Having introduced this scratchy organ sound, they continue to play with it for a couple of songs, before switching unexpectedly back into the orchestral pop on sixth song If it’s True. Then suddenly they’re off to explore the kind of airy, breezy territory of Summer Sun and (some of) And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out.
This kind of shift should indicate why I find this to be an oddly wrong-footing album. Just as soon as I start to let my assumptions settle, they shift just a little and suddenly I am having to guess again. This is odd because in no way is this a radical or unusual-sounding album for Yo La Tengo. If you don’t actually listen it might even sound like them going through the motions, but when you sit down and really have a look at what they’ve done it’s quite a bit more interesting than you might at first realise.
Considering how few bands can really achieve that so many albums into their careers, I think it’s safe to say that we will look back on Yo La Tengo as one of the true greats.
Yo La Tengo – Here to Fall
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if i heard this album in starbucks i’d say; hmmmm, interesting band.
Starbucks? Why you cheeky fucki… oh, alright, maybe. I do like this, but there’s definitely been no Sugarcube, Motel 6, Big Day Coming etc for a while now.
If I heard this album in Starbucks, I’d say: “What the fuck am I doing in Starbucks?”
tired and grumpy Bart?
Maybe you should go to Starbucks and get a coffee – might perk you up.
Heheh..
It’s been a while since we’ve had a good t-shirt comment on here.
Let me out of Starbucks.
Please.
Send help.
Stop whingeing or we’ll send you to McDonald’s.
Bart, you are doomed to wander the desolate, faux-ethnic carpeted wastelands of Starbucks for all eternity. Best just get used to your fate – fighting it will just make ot worse.
skinny latte for the ginger boy!
Can’t… breathe……
No more…. latte…..
Remember that scene when Bart Simpson was walking through a shopping mall and, as he walked past, each store in turn was becoming a branch of Starbuck’s?
Well… he was called Bart too!
ack.
At least now I can get something I want at Starbucks……
Authorities have uncovered a massive underground drug smuggling tunnel snaking through the US-Mexico border. Law enforcement officers marveled at its sophistication. The elaborate tunnel had framed sidewalls, electricity, and its own Starbucks.
i saw on the news that starbucks will be changing the name of their stores in seattle (where they started) is an attempt to gain some kind of cred as a local cafe
for the right:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,533480,00.html
for the left:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31950361/ns/business-food_inc/
(for non US citizens – fox is the conseravtive channell and msnbc the liberal – or so says conventional wisdom)