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Yo La Tengo, my one true love
While everything else, including girls, have come and gone, Yo La Tengo has stayed. Since I started listening to them in the end of eighth grade, Yo La Tengo has always been there for me. They have always been my reliable source of good music, never ever disappointing me. I can with proud heart say that I’ve never heard a Yo La Tengo-song I really dislike.
Yo La Tengo was my gate to indie music and the different sub-genres, and I guess they sometimes still are. Before I started listening to them, I was just listening to reggae (not just Bob Marley, but the whole scene) and bands like Opeth and Dream Theater. You can say I’d only heard music that’s quite polished and clean. When I heard Yo La Tengos feedback, noise and energy, it opened a door to a completely new world for me. I can’t actually remember how I found them, in some review or something maybe, but the point is that I had never heard that something so “raw” and “unpolished” could be so beautiful. Now, they are nothing compared to the shitgaze-scene in making noise, but at that time, “Pass The Hatchet, I Think I Am Godkind” really blew my mind.
If you need an eyeopener to different indie-genres, Yo La Tengo might just be the very best band. You’ve got lo-fi, folkish stuff in Moldy Peaches-style (fakebook), the droning and noise that many indie bands represent, you have the shoegaze (From a Motel 6), the more classic 90’s alternative rock like Tom Courtenay, Sugarcube as well as a bit of twee and alternative country in I Can Hear Our Heart Beat as One. And then in And Then It Turned Itself Inside Out, you had something quite new, that sounded a little bit like Mazzy Star, but also very different. I like to call it quiet zen-Buddhist drone pop or something like that. Yo La Tengo has also done a lot of more garage-stuff and they also showed me how great Jackson Browne was with their great cover of “Somebody’s Baby.”
Then, a few weeks ago, I lost my virginity with Yo La Tengo. Okay, that metaphor sucked, but anyway, I saw them live for the first time. And what an experience that was. It was incredibly nuanced and the concert could go from a noise/drone-jam to mellow pop and back to some funk/fusion-ish flirt and then to quiet pop with only guitars and vocal, to more pure melodic drone-tones, and then it explodes in guitar fuzz with songs like “Tom Courtenay” and “Sugarcube”, and if that wasn’t enough, they played my absolute favourite song ever, “The Last Days of Disco.” They had two transistor-organs, a Farfisa compact, an Ace Tone, two drum kits, loads of guitars/basses and an electric piano. I believe all three members had shuffled through every instrument before the show was over. They played songs from both the ’90s and now, and they took the bests songs from the new album and managed to blend in all the different songs. All the three had a very strong presence and there was never a dull moment. Well, I guess it wouldn’t have been a dull for me anyhow, but I think that even though you’re not a fan, you could have quite a bit of fun, since the playlist was so varied, diversive and interesting. I believe they showed us quite well how they have managed to stay so fresh for so many years (I believe it’s about twenty now) and they showed me why Yo La Tengo is my only true love.
Tagged as: American, Experimental, Indie, Noise, Shoegaze