Labels: Matador
Review by: Captain Fidanza
Being given the chance to review an album by Yo La Tengo is such an immense thrill that it’s easy to forget I’m an ice-cool music reviewer for an ice-cool music review website.
This band (and in particular their album I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One) have beguiled me ever since the radiant golden glow of the cover of their eighth album caught my eye in the Gentleman’s Walk branch of HMV in Norwich when I was about twenty. I’d never heard of them before, and to this day have no idea why I picked it up, turned it over in my hand before paying upwards of £15 at the till “” fuck you HMV, you deserved to go to hell along with Our Price and Virgin Megastores before you.
Despite this venom, that album remains in my possession nearly twenty years after I bought it and each of the songs on it manages to move me in an entirely different way every time I hear them.
The video to Sugarcube remains (alongside the imperious Sabotage) the finest synthesis of sound and vision made by anyone operating in the 4-minute field and features two comedians (David Cross and Bob Odenkirk) who have gone on to star in three of my very favourite television programmes “” Mr. Show, Arrested Development and Breaking Bad.
Seeing this band play live at Ornette Coleman’s Meltdown in 2009 was one of the best live shows I’ve seen and also happened to be the first time I took my then girlfriend out – the fact we broke up six months later was not the fault of Yo La Tengo, it was my fault, because I’m an arse.
Additionally, I shouldn’t really allow this moment to pass without mentioning the follow-up to I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One because if it results in just one more person hearing it, then I can sleep soundly in my grave tonight. Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out is a much slower and more contemplative record than its predecessor, although the occasional fuzzed-out airburst does offer something for fans of Sugarcube to tap their feet to. But it’s unquestionably Night Falls on Hoboken that will leave the deepest impressions upon you, with its seventeen-minute runtime encapsulating almost everything that makes this band the rarefied jewel it is. (It also features a song called Let’s Save Tony Orlando’s House, which is the finest inside joke I’ve ever been in on “” if you’re not in on this joke, you really should spend less time reading books and more time watching cartoons from 1993.)
Basically, this band has probably had a bigger influence on my life than any other, with the possible exception of The Fall or The Wu-Tang Clan, so the fact someone at Matador Records (slogan: “We go to the Mat, for the artists you Adore”) sent this to AM and he sent it on to me, is commensurate with someone who was a really big fan of Sean Maguire finding the Abbey Road DAT Tapes for his debut album in the shed of 73 Highworth Road, London, N11 2SN, along with a signed photograph of him standing next to a waxwork of Roger Moore in Madame Tussauds. In other words, it’s huge.
So, enough waffling, what’s the fucking album like?
Well for one, it’s nothing that hasn’t been heard before, being as it is, an expanded reissue of their first album for Matador back in 1993. I suppose the best way to describe the sounds within would be with reference to the widely-despised term, “Shoegaze”, although it should be pointed out that in this instance, the shoes being gazed upon are almost certainly a pair of vintage Vans (Style 36) rather than some Air Max 90s.
This is gentle, mid-paced, introspective music for people who read books and don’t care a flying-slippery-swig for what’s fashionable – by never trying to define the moment, Yo La Tengo are one of those rare bands who always manage to sound contemporary.