Yo La Tengo Albums
When it comes to listing the band that had the best albums in the 90's, it may be hard to beat Yo La Tengo. That is no small statement either, that might be the best decade of rock music ever created. Their albums of that time - May I Sing With Me, Painful, Electr-O-Pura, I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One - are pretty much perfect. What the band does well it does well: tender ballads that anyone could enjoy like "Alyda", "Tears are in Your Eyes", and "Nowhere Near"; crazy guitar noise freak-out rock songs "Some Kinda Fatigue", "Sugarcube" and "From a Motel 6"; and a mix of past styles in up dated to a new format such as "Center of Gravity", "Little Honda", and "Paul is Dead". It is hard to think of a more unique band than YLT, their choices of cover songs over the years proves that they love all kinds of rock music, and the consistency of their albums proves they are serious about making music work through determination. They also managed to create what is possibly the best rock song ever written, "Five Cornered Drone". This is one of the bands that helps show that anything is possible, an all-time great for sure.
Band Members:
Georgia Hubley- Drums, Vocals
Ira Kaplan - Guitar, Vocals
James McNew - Bass, Vocals (1992-present)
(various bass players 1986-1991 including Gene Holder, Stephen Wichnewski, Mike Lewis, and Dave Schramm on guitar)
Best Album:
I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One
Biggest Influences:
The Velvet Underground, The Kinks, NRBQ, Television, Flaming Groovies, Love, Ramones, Sonic Youth, Big Star
1986
Ride the Tiger - 66%
The band Yo La Tengo got off to a kind of promising start, but nothing too daring. The band is noticeably guitar driven from the very first song, but Ride the Tiger is an album of total confusion. Most of the songs vary from good to decent, with the occasional gem or horrible idea poking out. Even songs that are good like the country twang of "Five Years" and the out of place, midwestern instrumental "Living in the Country" sound worse than they actually are because they seem so random compared to the records pleasing-rock kinda vibe.
If you are in the mood for a diverse listen, then many songs on here are actually very good, the best examples being the pop rock of "The Way Some People Die" or the futuristic "Crispy Duck". As far as cover songs go, the choices are excellent: The Kinks' "Big Sky" and Love's "A House is Not a Motel". The band has an affinity for obscure 60's pop, but fails to add anything really interesting to either of these tunes, probably because they haven't found their own sound yet. Overall, Ride the Tiger is very unfocused and does not show off Yo La Tengo as anything special. With the unique taste and stylings the band has they really might go somewhere, but they'll have to write better albums than this if they wanna be remembered when the dust settles.
Best songs: Crispy Duck, the Way Some People Die, The Forest Green
1987
New Wave Hot Dogs - 64%
The second album has more intricate playing and an improved concentration on one kind of sound, and that sound is very influenced by Lou Reed, Ray Davies, Thurston Moore, Bob Dylan. Still, the songs are not strong throughout. The ideas are better, but it is just as inconsistent as the debut. There are times that with the diversity of the song choices, you can tell Hubley and Kaplan were former music critics. Deja Vu for the most part, though it is a shorter, more upbeat record. Notable tunes include the pensive "Did I Tell You", "Lost in Bessemer" (Jimmy Page style acoustic ditty), and the insane sonic trip of "The Story of Jazz".
1989
President Yo La Tengo - 82%
On their third album, President, the band finally gets out of their rut. At only 7 songs, the album seems twice as long as it is. "Drug Test" is an ethereal song if there ever was one, with its open-sky guitars and lyrics stating, "I hate feeling the way I feel/ I wish I was high/ brighter than nothin', smarter than nobody/ I'm wastin' away." "Barnaby, "Hardly Working" has an insane guitar-feedback loop running throughout that a typical YLT song is thrown on top of, and it works! "I Threw it All Away" is an excellent Nashville Skyline era Dylan cover, and "The Evil that Men Do" and "Orange Song" are good spy tune/freak out punk, respectively.
Staying in touch with their diverse albums, the song that follows the first four, "Alyda", is the band's crowning achievement of the 1980's and one of the decade's best songs. Drummer Hubley sings the soaring background harmonies and guitarist Kaplan sings the Dylanesque lyrics, and the result is simply breathtaking. Songs like "Alyda", performed with such perfection, are the reason I listen to rock music. Every once in a while a perfect song is formed and it makes you stop whatever you are doing and take notice. Not so strangely, this album is YLT's Bayou Country, where a couple of perfect tracks overshadow the rest ("Alyda" is the classic "Proud Mary", the overlong "The Evil that Men Do, Pablo's Version" is the "Graveyard Train"). Still, there is a wealth of joy to be had for the 30 minutes of President, and from here the band can go anywhere.
Best songs: Alyda, Drug Test, Barnaby, "Hardly Working
An Interruption if you will: Fakebook (from 1990), a covers record, is review below under "Non Album Things". When 81% of a record is cover songs or remixes, it is a covers album in my book. If you don't agree...does it really matter?
1992
May I Sing With Me - 95%
President showed that the band could create hard rock and soft rock well, but May I Sing With Me shows that the band are masters of any kind of style. Not only does the record have a song in almost every kind of rock music imaginable, increase the sonic palette exponentially, it does it in ways only most could dream of. It's all there in the first song "Detouring America with Horns": steady guitar that builds and builds to something completely monumental. "Some Kinda Fatigue" has one of the great rock riffs of all time; "Upside Down" is pure melodic rock bliss; "Out the Window" is as demented as it gets; "Satellite" is an "Alyda" like spook fest; "Always Something" is a dizzying array of harmonies of harmonies; "Sleeping Pill" is as hypnotic as music can be and always draws you under it's spell.
New bass player James McNew has a lot to do with these changes, and he is the missing link the band has been waiting for. You could place the 11 songs on here in almost any order and it would still work, and maybe they could use some reshuffling - Putting "Mushroom Cloud of Hiss" (guitar FREAK OUT) and "Swing for Life" (drone festival) at numbers 3 and 4 kind of kills the momentum the record had built with the first two songs, but they are still good songs by any standards. Viewing the record song by song it is easily the band's strongest to date.
I will now spend a paragraph talking about Yo La Tengo's best song, and one of the best rock songs of all time, "Five Cornered Drone." This song introduces one instrument at a time, beginning with a simple guitar lick. It transforms form there into a swirling tornado of guitar bliss mixed with simple rhythm section backing that rings truer than any other rock song (ever). It stays on that for a while before coming in with the meaningful lyrics sung by Kaplan, "Tiiiime....waits for reason.....there’s no reason...things just go wrong. They always do. Nothing works out right...we try and we try. You Can Search...you can look all around you....with both eyes open, but it doesn't matter! It's always the same, so it's like that, we try and we...try...". It then goes into a minute and a half of guitar soloing-noise rock that defies explanation in emotions, before ending (but NOT fading out) the same way it began. It is hard to think of a better example of an experimental rock song that creates something completely new and different. What is interesting is that it does not over shadow anything else on the record, and it all keeps flying on. Only a rock band that really pushes the boundaries could come up with a record this diverse and make it all sound like the work of the same three people. With May I Sing With Me, Yo La Tengo became a great rock band.
Best songs: Five Cornered Drone, Some Kinda Fatigue, Upside Down, Out the Window
1993
Painful - 92%
While the previous record was all over the place stylistically, this one picks one style and goes with it: ‘dream pop’. There is not a single song on here that is not in some way lush, somber, and beautiful. It is not quiet all the way through, with tracks like the guitar distortion spewing "From a Motel 6" (how do they get that balance of smooth and jarring just right between the verse and the chorus??) and the second version of "Big Day Coming" (the one that RocKS) guaranteed to wake you up if you drift off to sleep (it otherwise does make for an excellent sleeping album, just keep the volume pretty low). Taking its cue from bands like The Cocteau Twins, My Bloody Valentine, and Jesus and Mary Chain (and other countless shoegaze bands), the band still manages to come up with something unique for an album of pretty melodies.
The soft ballads are successful in the heart breaking "Nowhere Near" sung by Georgia as one of their most touching songs ever, a cover of The Only Ones' "The Whole of the Law", and opener seven minute "Big Day Coming". The melodic noise-rockers are scattered throughout: the washing "Double Dare", the pounding and repetitive "I Was the Fool Beside You", and epic, emotional churning instrumental closer "I Heard You Looking". Only “Sudden Organ” and “Worrying Thing” fails to empress as much as the others. With these tracks and sequencing, the band makes a masterwork of subtlety that remains a standout in rock music. The lyrics all have to do with love, and the mood established is masterful. No matter where the band goes from here, it's hard to imagine them improving on a genre experiment like Painful.
Best songs: Nowhere Near, I Heard You Looking, The Whole of the Law, From a Motel 6
1995
Electr-O-Pura - 90%
Refusing to be inconsistent, the band hits us again with another album of melodic pop. There is no "mood" or one "style" like Painful, but whatever the band tries they do it great. Electr-O-Pura is literally all over the place, and it can take a while to get a handle on all the different types of music: Kaplan's guitar rock dominates "Bitter End" and "Flying Lesson" (sounding a tad like Sonic Youth's "Therea's Sound World"); "Don't Say a Word" and "Pablo and Andrea" are haunting melodies that are among the most beautiful songs the band has done; ballad's "The Hour Grows Late" and "The Ballad of Red Buckets" are very different but both set a trance of sorts; "Tom Courtenay" is the band's best power pop attempt since "Upside Down", signaling the film Dr. Zhivago as a reference. In fact, the album is very much a carbon copy of May I Sing With Me, albeit more toned done and controlled. Not that that is a bad thing, but with each album Yo La Tengo seems to be showing more restraint while remaining consistent as ever, a hard feat to accomplish.
The only area people could possibly complain about here is length - the last two records were rather tight at 11 tracks while this one is overlong at 14. Songs such as "My Hearts Reflection", "Attack on Love", and "Blue Line Swinger", while not bad songs, would not be missed in my opinion. But hey, it's hard to complain about an album as ambitious and consistent as this and with May I Sing With Me, Painful, and Electr-o-pura, this band has created a string of masterpieces that any rock band could be proud of. A must have for any fan of rock music, just like the last two. Songs I didn't mention: haunting opener "Decora", creepy but poignant vocal lead whistles of "Paul is Dead", and the Royal Trux homage "False Alarm" which plods along at its own mechanism and pace for over five minutes.
Best songs: Bitter End, Tom Courtenay, Don't Say a Word, Paul is Dead
An Interuption if You Will: The track listing on the album is completely wrong. Whether on purpose or not, it is quite annoying.
1997
I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One - 97%
Amazingly, the band manages to top itself again! There may be no limit to Yo La Tengo's creativity because this is the band's most diverse, consistent, challenging, ambitious, and longest record to date! Each track is a different kind of style, from Bossa nova beat to Krautrock to shoegaze to 60's Beach Boys cover update to post rock to...Yo La Tengo itself! There is a level of confidence here that believe it or not, since their last 3 records were also all masterworks, seems fresh and new.
On the ballad front: "Damage" is an update of "Alyda" done to equal perfection and beauty, with dual vocals from outer space; "One PM Again" incorporates a pedal steel into a touching ballad that borders on country music; “Centra of gravity” employs a cheesy background percussion to great effect with a catchy melody you might hear in a hotel lounge; “Stockholm Syndrome” is McNew’s stab at classicism and his first lead vocal that totally fits in with the reminder of the group. “shadows” sung by Hubley is just pure emotion on paper, and in execution it uses her voice brilliantly to make a perfect little pop classic. “The Lie and How We told It” is another just blissful song for a windy day, making it sound like the band can use all their voices to maximal emotional balances.
On the psychedelic / noise rock front: "Deeper into Movies" is a drone from the planet of feedback that makes no sense lyrically and is all the better for it - it simply paints images of another world; "We're an American Band" creates a psychedelic atmosphere worthy of any past master and all of the guitar solo wizardry, whether it be Mercury Rev, Hendrix, Sonic Youth, Hawkwind, whomever! The album groove and punches too, “Moby Octopad” plays with the foundation of VU “European son to make something entirely their won; “Sugarcube” and Autumn Sweater prove that a song can be distorted but also beautiful and walk the line between sonatas and rock. For the one cover song, beach boys “Little honda” is filtered through Sonic Youth style grunge effects and transformed in the YLT sound.
For the two longer instrumentals, both work in their own way- “Green Arrow” is a calming hum a song for an evening laying in the grass with the crickets, and “Spec Bebop” is quite the jamming sonic trip, 10 plus minutes of almost random sound effects, never boring and never tiring; if there was a flaw in the album maybe these two songs didn’t need to be that long, but it still mainly works. The album is a whirlwind of rock music, a summation that improves on the foundation it is based upon. When the band is at tis best as it is here, its hard to believe all this noise and creativity could come from only three people. Like a brand new skyscraper that shines brighter than any other in what is already the world's largest city, I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One is among the greatest rock records ever created. Whatever kind of music fan you are, it is impossible to resist it's gaze.
Best songs: Deeper into Movies, We're an American Band, Damage, One PM Again, Moby Octopad
more to come soon