It’s now 40 years since Yo La Tengo’s founding married couple, Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley, first performed together, and 37 since the New Jersey trio’s debut album. That means a back catalogue vast enough to overawe anyone who attempts to join the fanbase as a newcomer today. Even if you just start with their cover versions you’ll be wading through over 50 reworkings that range from The Beach Boys to ZZ Top to Californian punk band The Urinals, with Richard Hell and Slade thrown in for good measure.
Nor is it safe to assume that they’ll be retreading old ground on this 17th album. Like another long-running American indie band led by a married couple, Low, in their recent work they’ve been pushing intriguingly at their familiar style, finding cracks in the bedrock of their sound.
Their last release, We Have Amnesia Sometimes, was a pandemic project consisting of five lengthy ambient instrumentals. This time they did away with a producer and recorded themselves mostly playing live. There’s a loose, mildly chaotic feel to the opening song, Sinatra Drive Breakdown. It’s easy to picture Kaplan, Hubley and bassist James McNew standing in a circle, feeling out the direction of the music while a propulsive krautrock rhythm gives way to scratchy, buzzy guitar effects.
The title track is another long one that buries Kaplan’s vocals beneath clanking drums and a dark cloak of guitar feedback. Yet somehow it still sounds like they’re having fun, enjoying the contrast between his meek delivery and the racket they can summon from just three instruments.
Elsewhere they bring in some electronic beats on Miles Away, which frees Hubley up for some gauzy vocals. Brain Capers is all over the place, with a jazzy intro that becomes something else entirely a minute in – an urgent race led by a guitar doing very strange things indeed.
If you’re not already invested in the band this could all come across as a shade intimidating, if it wasn’t for a couple of truly beautiful compositions. Aselestine, which appears to be named after a nasal spray for hay fever, finds Hubley singing again, this time over a wistful acoustic strum. Apology Letter also allows the guitar effects to take a back seat and makes Kaplan’s heartfelt lyrics the focus. It’s more proof that when these three people are left alone in a room, marvellous things can still happen.
