Yo La Tengo - There's a Riot Going On
The Guardian 80
(Matador)
The chorus that Georgia Hubley sings softly on the second track of Yo La Tengo’s 15th studio album serves almost as a mission statement for the trio: “Whenever I see you, there are shades of blue.” Yo La Tengo are, as so often, blue: but theirs is not the midnight blue of despair, but the pale blue of melancholy, and sometimes the sharp, unending blue of a cloudless sky. The song exemplifies the group in other ways: its jaunty rhythm is taken straight from 60s beat pop, befitting their record collector reputation, but recast into something somnambulant and soothing all their own.
There are flickers of the old fire on There’s a Riot Going on (which bears no similarity to Sly and the Family Stone, to the surprise of precisely no one). On For You Too, James McNew’s bass puts all four to the floor, with the fuzz pedal turned on, but Ira Kaplan refuses to rise to the bait, picking arpeggios around the basslines instead of wigging out, murmuring his vocal – but for the most part Yo La Tengo are gently blowing on embers rather than poking the logs.
Continue reading... Fri Mar 16 09:30:01 GMT 2018Drowned In Sound 80
Writing about Yo La Tengo is difficult, in the same way as writing about any band that’s been going for over three decades is difficult. What is there to say that has not already been said? The problem is perhaps rendered more acute in the case of this one – very special band – than in other similar cases. One can always find more ways to heap praise on the shape-shifting brilliance of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, to express tentative excitement about a new Flaming Lips record, or to disparage Metallica for their own particular brand of self-delusional redundancy.
Yo La Tengo, in contrast to all of the above, are almost anonymous. Formed in 1984 in Hoboken, New Jersey (also the city where Frank Sinatra was born), the husband-and-wife duo of Georgia Hubley and Ira Kaplan reportedly went through thirteen bass players before finding James McNew (who has held that spot down since 1992). There’s a Riot Going On is their fifteenth album and, like most of their discography, it carries itself with an unassuming (but powerful) air of quiet confidence. On this record – on the last three or four records perhaps – Yo La Tengo sound like they have existed forever. They have become so completely absorbed into the fabric of the most visible echelons of the musical underground that it’s nearly impossible to imagine an indie landscape without them.
Despite the title’s allusion to Sly & The Family Stone’s landmark 1971 funk classic – possibly the most significant early Seventies elegy for the murdered optimism of the sixties – There’s a Riot Going On is Yo La Tengo’s most sedate, ambient record to date. In this sense the album could be interpreted as mimicking the band’s very longevity. There’s a subtle defiance about Yo La Tengo’s apparent permanence, and perhaps There’s a Riot Going On is simply restating that – throughout all the economic, political, and social turmoil constantly engulfing (or at least threatening to engulf) us all – this is one band who will always weather the storm.
There are, of course, some beautiful songs here. ‘Shades of Blue’, ‘Polynesia #1’, and ‘What Chance Have I Got?’ stand out for their placid gorgeousness. The fantastic ‘For You Too’ is the only track that could really be adequately described as a 'rock song'. Those for whom Yo La Tengo’s back catalogue is defined by ‘From a Motel 6’ or ‘Tom Courtenay’ may find themselves disappointed here, but only if they consciously choose to avoid the more humble pleasures on offer here. The opening/closing duo of ‘You Are Here’ and ‘Here You Are’ act as an adept summary of this album’s true strength. Like a hug from an old friend, it asks for nothing in return, offering a comforting warmth that it’s difficult to imagine any other band on the planet being able to equal.
“Laugh away the bad times / Lie about what’s to come / The less said the better / Let’s drink until we’re dumb”, Kaplan intones on the glorious ‘Forever’. Don’t interpret There’s a Riot Going On as a statement but as escapism, and as an affirmation of the virtues of endurance.
Mon Mar 19 17:42:05 GMT 2018Pitchfork 76
Yo La Tengo capture the feeling of post-traumatic calm on their latest album, assuring their status as a wry and comforting cornerstone of indie rock.
Tue Mar 20 05:00:00 GMT 2018The Guardian 60
(Matador)
Sly and the Family Stone’s 1971 album of the same name was a full-on record, reacting to extraordinary times. Yo La Tengo’s 15th-odd offering sounds nothing like its namesake. It too is a reaction to tense times, but a much calmer one.
Like virtually every other Yo La Tengo album, Riot finds the veteran trio striving to make the guitar band sound like the high point of human civilisation, rather than a vehicle for rebelliousness. It is, however, a departure for them. Largely improvised, often meditative, these 15 tracks find Georgia Hubley often taking the lead on guitar, offering up ambient passages – like Dream Dream Away, a strummed interlude of off-hand beauty – and, on Esportes Casual, a little loungey bossanova that, though sweet, sits ill with the rest of this immersive listen.
Continue reading... Sun Mar 18 08:00:03 GMT 2018Tiny Mix Tapes 60
Yo La Tengo
There’s a Riot Going On
[Matador; 2018]
Rating: 3/5
Every time I think about Yo La Tengo’s There’s a Riot Going On, I come back to the same essential question: whether I find this album more beautiful than boring, or whether I find it more boring than beautiful. Historically, much of Yo La Tengo’s prettiest music flirts with simplicity, but what makes it great are the sparks of sonic ingenuity and sheer electric vigor it carries within. The band’s most compelling songs beat with a captivating lifeline that steers them clear of banality, regardless of whether the music is noisy or reserved.
Yo La Tengo’s finest slow tracks find power and a degree of freedom in the slow and scaled-back, in long, languid instrumental ostinatos, in mantric progressions, in Ira Kaplan’s whispered falsetto and Georgia Hubley’s disarming tenderness. Good examples of this can be found throughout the band’s career, whether it be on brilliant early albums Painful (“Big Day Coming,” “The Whole of the Law”) and Electr-O-Pura (“The Hour Grows Late,” “Don’t Say A Word [Hot Chicken #2]”), the excellent And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out (“Tears Are In Your Eyes,” “Last Days of Disco”), or the solid, more recent Fade (“Two Trains”). These tunes, although sedate, are texturally rich and emotionally magnetic, hitting with as much force as the tidal waves of reverb and feedback heard in clear influences Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine.
Most of There’s a Riot Going On is slow. In fact, the only thing that could even be called a “rock song” here is the fantastic, vulnerable “For You Too,” which plays like a classic jammer from early-2000s-era Yo La Tengo. The almost-ambient “Dream Dream Away” has a great feeling for movement, and it maintains a sense of spontaneity throughout its repeated progressions. “Shortwave” is the track I’ve listened to most on this album; it’s a dense, intricately layered composition that evokes Grouper, Stars of the Lid, and Tim Hecker with its airy whirlwinds of voice, synth, guitar, and (I think) bowed bass. In terms of mood and gravity, “Shortwave” equals any instrumental the band has produced in the past 30 years. “What Chance Have I Got,” another major winner here, channels the silvery, midnight moods of And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out, especially in the relaxed way that its sounds hazily create the feeling of something whole. Its laid-back bass line gives way beautifully to piano, providing a delicate foundation for the song’s spellbinding percussion and Hubley’s characteristically wistful vocals.
The album’s cracks start to show in its patterns: a lot of these songs are built around loops or repeating motifs that run with little or no variation. These tracks often feel constructed in waves and layers, spiraling outward from an apparent nucleus. Kaplan said as much in a recent interview, where he compared the band’s process on There’s A Riot Going On to that of their work in film scoring. “It becomes more like one person will have an idea, we’ll record it, then someone else will add something to that,” he explained. “It becomes one block at a time. That was really how we made this record, and recorded and came up with these songs. There was a lot of sitting around a computer.”
This layered approach is felt throughout the album, for better or worse. “Forever” is a clear casualty of this; its doo-wop refrain and groovy bass line could have been interesting with variation, but their sameness becomes tedious and even repellent the longer they continue. In the same vein, the reversed guitar loop of “Ashes” becomes stale, ultimately eclipsing the dreamy cadence of the rest of the song. “Esportes Casual” is a nice palate cleanser, but it borders on also being monotonous.
Additionally, the album’s lyrics sometimes feel lazy. Take, for example, “Polynesia #1,” which sports the apathetic “I’m going to Polynesia/ I’m going at my leisure/ I’m going before the snow flies/ I’m going as the crow flies.” “Out of the Pool” is caught in a rut with its techno-thriller bass line, which is disappointing since it comes from James McNew, one of indie rock’s most engaging bassists; its lyrics read like discarded text from Radiohead’s Amnesiac, which isn’t necessarily bad, but doesn’t seem like the right fit for this record.
It’s been said that There’s a Riot Going On was conceived to play as a respite from the chaos of daily life, which is evidenced by the dissonance between the album’s title and its overall vibe. But neither side of this discord rings true with reality: there aren’t really riots going on, at least not ones informed by radical politics, and, conversely, I wonder how productive it is to create art that encourages us to feel safe and calm when we really have no reason to be. Therefore, There’s a Riot Going On’s theory doesn’t quite match up to its execution, and its parts are greater than the whole. So, is it more beautiful, or is it more boring? The problem is that it’s often too difficult to tell the difference.