In Profile: Yo La Tengo
From the jangle-pop of their early years, via indie-rock, folk and noise-pop, over four decades, Yo La Tengo have staked out and defined their own territory…
Where to start with Yo La Tengo? It’s an apt question for those reading this piece maybe coming fresh to the three-piece formed (by couple Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley) in Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1984; they are, after all, a band whose longevity seems to know no bounds.
They first graced my eardrums when I was hungrily cherry picking new favourite artists from their label, Matador Records’, 1997 compilation album, What’s Up Matador? In fact, their song, Tom Courtenay (below) – a strange, mournful tribute to the movies and stars of yesteryear – was track one, side one. Perhaps it was because what followed included the likes of the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Cat Power, Guided by Voices, Liz Phair, Superchunk – I could go on – that YLT somehow got lost in the mix. Or it could have been because, as beautiful as their contributions to the comp were (side two included Don’t Say a Word), I was far too young at that time, and far too interested in the shoutier end of the scale to fully appreciate and explore their oeuvre.
Tom Courtenay and Don’t Say a Word were lifted from 1995′s – what I now know to be iconic – Electr-O-Pura. But it would take me almost another decade before I immersed myself more fully into Yo La Tengo’s deep waters, when I picked up another compilation released by Matador, Prisoners of Love. Subtitled A Smattering of Scintillating Senescent Songs: 1985–2003, it was one dedicated solely to the band’s long career up to the early noughts, and saved me the YLT detective work I’d failed to do to that point.
It was a lovely find, one I’m super grateful for today; it gently pulled me right up close to what I understand, from today’s vantage point and now advancing years, is so recognisably their sound. When I bought Prisoners of Love, they’d already been active for two decades, which astonishingly makes it a nice round 40 years as I write. More astonishing is that their output, while obviously experimenting occasionally with genre and sound, branching out, retracing their steps and evolving, has so steadfastly maintained its quality. Re-listening to Prisoners of Love recently, it occurred to me that that quality is clearly the connective tissue of this remarkable band.
Yo La Tengo (still on Matador) have since released a further seven studio albums; not the most prolific, a new long player has materialised roughly every other year since their 1986 debut, Ride the Tiger. Bringing things up-to-date, in 2020 came a 25th anniversary reissue of Electr-O-Pura, what Matador called “a thrilling document of one of America’s most beloved bands hitting their creative stride.” PR hyperbole aside, they weren’t wrong. Last year, I bought the re-release and their latest, This Stupid World (2023), within a few weeks of each other. (Pictchfork called the latter “their liveliest album in at least a decade.”) Listening to them back-to-back they read as a glorious supersized standalone that just happens to straddle more than a quarter of a century.
Radio friendly bangers are rare (though hardly non-existent in their richly textured back-catalogue); theirs is a sound that grows into itself. As a listener it creeps up slowly, so that, before you know it, you’re engrossed, then entirely submerged in the binaural sonic wash. Writing in the liner notes for Prisoners of Love, the band’s tour manager, Joe Puleo remarks that: “The great thing about music is its ability to return you to a different time and place…” He might as well be describing Yo La Tengo – a band of subtle, often mournful brilliance, who do this to a tee.
From the jangle-pop stylings of the early years, via indie-rock, a smidgen of folk and noise-pop, they have staked out and defined their own territory so that, in today’s digital landfill wastes, they persist. And in some style. So: Where to start with Yo La Tengo? My advice? If you haven’t already, just start.
Mike Pinnington
Yo La Tengo play Content, Liverpool, 30 August
Image credit: Cheryl Dunn
