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Yo La Tengo - Popular Songs
| Pitchfork |
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Oh demon reliability! Oh demon longevity! These twin curses can plague any decades-old band in an age when careers are measured in months. Yo La Tengo can count themselves in the rare company of this group, elder statespeople operating in a genre where they're influence-grandparents. And alongside peers Sonic Youth and the Flaming Lips, YLT have to operate under the bane of their own consistency at a time when the new and a compelling narrative are over-celebrated. All three of those bands have reached a steady state where reinvention is unnecessary: They're so frequently good they don't even get a redemption story. Hell, Wavves already is set up for one of those. Fortunately, as Yo La Tengo celebrate a quarter-century of existence with Popular Songs, their twelfth album, there's still plenty to like without a PR push. The Yo La Tengo repertoire has expanded steadily over the years, and the genre experiments of years past have slowly assimilated into their creative process until it's hard to remember the mere Velvets-jacking indie pop band they once were. The easy way to draw fickle attention to your dozenth album would be a drastic makeover, but Yo La Tengo are wise enough to choose continuity over the easy angle. And as far flung as these dozen Popular Songs may be, any Yo La Tengo scholar can easily trace their DNA back through their discography....full text |
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| Cavacool |
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Happy 25th anniversary, Yo La Tengo. Instead of marking the occasion by exchanging silver paperweights and reminiscing about their years of critically praised genre-jumping music, the Hoboken, New Jersey trio will release Popular Songs on September 8. Somewhat of an ironic title, considering that despite twelve albums and countless EPs, the experimental band is little known to the mainstream radio listener. Like anyone involved in a union spanning a quarter century, the group has forged a bit of a routine together. A few Yo La Tengo album trademarks are notable in the newest release: a foray into dream pop euphoria with the upbeat ‘Nothing to Hide’, a jazzy showcase of Ira Kaplan’s keyboard and clear enunciation in ‘Periodically Triple or Double’, and a motown-esque sweetly written duet ‘If It’s True’. The album also includes a few self-indulgent (but rightly so) 9-minute plus tracks in their traditional style; slow and stark, quick and frenetic. Patience might be required for the meandering length and slow pace of ‘The Fireside’. However, they shine at their non-lyrical best during ‘And the Glitter is Gone’; carefully cacophonous guitar feedback clashes perfectly with the building denseness and Georgia Hubley’s echoed syllables. All in all, Popular Songs is a sweet, mellow addition to the Yo La Tengo catalogue. There is little semblance to the early 2009 surprise release by the band’s lo-fi garage alter ego, the Condo Fucks. It doesn’t quite bring me back to the I Can Heart the Heart Beating As One days, but it’s not the settled down, over the hill, get-in-the-mini-van-to-pick-up-the-kids-from-soccer album. Calm and cool, but ensnaring and exciting; sounds like a perfect chill album for a breezy, rainy summer. This tuneful marriage is still harmonious....full text |
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| Altmusic |
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Across 20 years and 12 or so albums, Yo La Tengo's greatest, most acclaimed outing came with 1996's I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One. The album peddled a kind of musical pot-luck: switching up styles and hopping across genres with aplomb. Yo La Tengo weren't being mid-'90s, Beck-styled smarty-pantses about it, they were just the sound of the world's greatest pick-up band, the signed-to-Matador equivalents of dudes in a nameless garage-band, knocking out whatever they wish just for kicks. Rather than giving fans more of what they were pining for, Yo La Tengo ditched such a scattershot style for their next two records; 2000's And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out and 2003's Summer Sun offering surprisingly insular, intimate takes of half-whispered melancholy. After the middling I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass in 2006, the pretty-darn-good Popular Songs is definite bounce-back; a set of songs not of the same stylistic feather, but delivered in the same spirit. By the same three people. The same three people who, 13 years ago, nailed this particular form of musical roulette....full text |
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