Album of the Week: Yo La Tengo soar on stellar new album, ‘This Stupid World’
If there’s one thing we can rely on Yo La Tengo for, it’s eclecticism, shortly followed by inspired musicianship. Thorough the band has existed since 1984, it wasn’t until 1993’s sixth studio album, Painful, that the band became whole. The pivotal release was the first to see founders Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley welcome bassist James McNew as an official and prominent force in the band.
“I think this group really started when we made the record Painful,” Kaplan told the AV Club in 2012. “Painful was the first record that we made as the three of us, and I think it sounds different from the things that came before it. Even though I can see connections with the earlier records and things we’ve done since, it really seems like mostly we’ve built on that record. Anything from before then is really, really different to me. Since Painful, I think we’ve gotten more confident and more willing to trust ourselves and trust each other, and probably better at dealing with things that go wrong.”
Indeed, Painful does pose as a blueprint of sorts, but the development and diversity Yo La Tengo have mustered over the past three decades is remarkable. The commendable spread of music present in This Stupid World, the band’s 17th studio project, owes most of its plaudits to the audacity, curiosity and virtuosity of the trio.
On the first track, ‘Sinatra Drive Breakdown’, which arrived as a single earlier in the week, the band exhibited all three of the aforementioned attributes and set the tone for the album in a seven-and-a-half-minute beauty. The eerie industrial sound introduces the titular concept and draws from the group’s diverse pool of inspiration.
‘Sinatra Drive Breakdown’ rolls seamlessly into the Sonic Youth-channeling ‘Fallout’. We hear Kaplan throw his angsty hands up from the off: “I won’t tell you how it’s gonna be / I don’t have what you want from me / I want to fall out of time”.
‘Tonight’s Episode’ comes next, reprising the gritty industrial textures of the intro track with a bouncing bassline to keep us on our toes heading towards the perfect juxtaposition of ‘Aselestine’. The lighter acoustic track hears Georgia Hubley take the mic, offering much-welcomed balance to proceedings. This transient acoustic excursion remains in threads throughout ‘Until it Happens’, in which Kaplan offers his voice to a more textured composition.
‘Apology Letter’ brings a curious tempo that saunters as close to positivity as Yo La Tengo might risk. The introspective lyrics and submersive synths ground the song in a tone more familiar to the rest of the album. This calm, subaquatic energy bleeds into the intro of ‘Brain Capers’, which eventually submits to a revival of the electric guitar energy heard in ‘Fallout’. The droning instrumentals muddle perfectly with the shifting, overlapped vocals of Kaplan and Hubley in a throwback to the Velvet Underground’s ‘The Murder Mystery’.
As we approach the end of the record, Yo La Tengo bow out to two epic tracks, ‘This Stupid World’ and ‘Miles Away’. The former gradually wrings the energy from the album as the cheery lyrics continue: “This stupid world – it’s killing me / This stupid world – is all we have.”
‘Miles Away’ comes as the perfect conclusion to the album. With the industrial energy wrung out, what remains is a steady, profound beat that crawls across a warping ambient soundscape. As it says on the tin, this transcendent track will have your mind floating miles away as Hubley reminds you: “You feel alone / Friends are all gone”. This final track leaves me hungry to give Bowery Electric’s Beat a relisten – after another run through This Stupid World, of course.
In This Stupid World, Yo La Tengo have returned for yet another exquisite work of art. To say where the album ranks among the band’s 16 previous albums is hard to say, but I’d place it close to the top – at the ceiling, it’s a matter of personal conviction. What I can say with confidence is that the album isn’t far from perfect. It combines an array of familiar styles into a nuanced platter of immersive ear candy with textural depth demanding eternal relistens. Wielding the instrumental and compositional virtuosity fans have grown to expect, this talented trio have expertly marshalled epoch-spanning influences into a well-balanced diet plan essential for those who like their music melancholic and transportive.
Never Miss A Beat
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