REVIEW: Yo La Tengo, And Then Nothing Turned Itself
Inside-Out
- Andrew Duncan
For 13 years, Yo La Tengo has been pop's most aspiring band. Georgia Hubley, Ira Kaplan and James McNew has developed a technique that combines sweet melody with decadent distortion; a sound only Yo La Tengo can intimately pull off in such a peculiar way that combines quirky abstract definition and dark angst. After listening to a Yo La Tengo song, there is a feeling of discovery.
Going on their tenth release, their lacking desire to change but constant redevelopment as a band allows them to create the best music being played today, and their new release demonstrates that their music can simply be described as music only Yo La Tengo can make.
And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out is the calm before the storm when a summer breeze dims to a still rage of confusion and beauty.
The album begins with the experimental and dreary opener, "Everyday." As the bass line creeps up and down a scale and a strange percussive drum pounds out a minimalist pattern, Kaplan sings a distant melody of coffee-shop lyrics, coordinated with the mysterious hum of an organ and underpowered by a weeping guitar that rarely makes its play. Like many of their songs, "Everyday" forms a complete painting of cloudy textures.
"Our Way To Fall" is the song that bids welcome into the album with a Simon and Garfunkel, "Feelin' Groovy" walkabout.
"Let's Save Tony Orlando's House," one of the band's funnier song titles, is Hubley's vocal introduction into the album, as she delicately comes across comparing to Karen Carpenter or a sedate Mamas and Papas B-side, later disseminating into the soft strums of "The Last Days of Disco" and "The Crying Of Lot G."
The band lights up on the George McRae tune "You Can Have It All," turning the disco hit into a hummable pop song.
The band ends as they began, on a quiet note, with "Night Falls On Hoboken," the city where they reside. Even though Hoboken rests 2 miles west of bustling New York City, Yo La Tengo musically describes Hoboken like a small, humble town in the middle of nowhere that fades into a vertigo of sounds swirling into nothing.
The three-year time lapse between this release and I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One was well worth the style and structure of each note placed into what could easily be one of the best albums to be released this year.
