Yo La Tengo - Popular Songs [Album]

Matador

October 4, 2009, 09:01 PM

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Yo La Tengo has the ability, no, the desire, to cheerfully visit the full raft of musical genres and influences, aided by an encyclopaedic knowledge of pop history, a spirit of musical adventure and overwhelming sense of fun.

Lest you think the New Jersey threesome are musical dilettantes, nothing could be further from the truth. Husband and wife team, Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley, together with James McNew, have been producing consistently good albums for some 25 years. "Popular Songs" is their twelfth album and seventh with Matador. In 1997 they produced "I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One," which established their indie-rock, shoegazing, folk-electronica credentials to critical acclaim. In 2006 their eleventh album, "I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass," informed by a growing body of orchestral soundtrack work, brought the trio to wider public recognition.

"Popular Songs" is an intelligent and sophisticated selection of accomplished, but always accessible 3 minute songs and longer, excursive tracks. The confident, well-produced, impeccably delivered selection is a tongue-in-cheek journey through numerous rock and pop sub-genres which, due to the quality of the musicianship, remains totally original.

The opener, 'Here to Fall,' features Ira’s gentle voice set against powerful strings and keyboard orchestration. Georgia takes vocals in 'By Two’s,' a track for chillin’ and groovin’ to if ever there was one. 'When it’s Dark' is sweet and soft with notable tambourine playing, and punk-rock goes rock in the garage-y, shoegazing, 'Nothing to Hide.'

But for me the highlights are the poppy 'Avalon or Something Similar,' with its echoes of surfy Beach Boys riffs and Crosby, Stills & Nash at their flower-power best, 'If it’s True,' a gentle Motown-inspired, 60s-sounding tribute with Four Tops’ strings, and 'Periodically Double or Triple,' a funky R&B number with conversational lyrics and Booker T organ.

The other half of this 73-minute recording consists of just three stretched-out, excursive tracks; the beautifully sultry, yet melancholic 'More Stars Than There Are in Heaven,' an aptly named, unhurried discourse, 'The Fireside,' and finally, a fifteen-minute noise-improv of hypnotic quality and serious guitar abuse, 'And the Glitter is Gone.' Naively I thought this title might refer to a certain glam-rock star of uncertain pedigree but according to reviewers Stateside it’s more likely to allude to the powers of a well-known cleaning product. This only goes to prove that as well as being artists of the highest possible calibre, able to reproduce countless genres and influences seemingly at will, Yo La Tengo’s work is most notably imbued with humour.
Which explains why I had a smile on my face throughout the review and probably accounts for the trio’s likeability.

Twelve albums and counting. Go Yo La Tengo!

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