Matador Records | Yo La Tengo Biography

". . . a Bergman film set in a Hoboken record store: abstract and intimate, sweetly whispering, raging like a distant thunderstorm." -- Chris Norris, SPIN Magazine

Jazz critic Whitney Balliett once described jazz as "the sound of surprise." While Yo La Tengo don't play jazz, the description applies. For 13 years they have been a remarkably consistent, almost comforting presence on the American pop scene, yet we love their genius because they are not afraid to surprise us. New York magazine calls them "the most dearly treasured New York rock band of the decade," but Georgia Hubley and Ira Kaplan have always lived across the river in Hoboken. Their recording site of preference in recent years is Nashville, but they're not a country band. Their songs are smashed into sharp relief with seemingly disparate elements, but always emerge a beautiful, somehow coherent mess.

Yo La Tengo is not a jazz combo, but they think like jazz musicians. They constantly redefine their own boundaries, stretch their songs into new shapes, and often restructure their old songs into new forms. As rabid fans of music, Yo La Tengo choose from a wildly diverse selection of covers (Richard Thompson, Wire, John Cale, The Dead C, The Normal, Flamin' Groovies, and the Kinks comprise a small sampling) and make the songs their own, much like Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry deconstructing "Embraceable You." Like most great artists, they never regurgitate derivatively, synthesizing influences into music that only sounds like Yo La Tengo.

Yo La Tengo don't play jazz on their new album, but they play like jazz players. The now-telepathic interplay of Georgia Hubley, Ira Kaplan, and James McNew means the trio now approach their music as one entity; they are solid and powerful, comfortable enough to allow room for improvisation. Georgia's drumming is a gentle web, but tensile enough to support sheets of organ throb and guitar noise. James anchors integral melodies in ways bassists rarely do. Ira's wild throttling of his guitar is by now legendary, but his restraint in playing the perfect few quiet notes keeps the band walking their delicate tightrope while pushing the music forward. Listening to ATNTIIO, you get the impression these songs will continue to grow and expand, even as they've just been committed to tape.

While their colossal sonic achievements are well-documented, Yo La Tengo's new album is more In A Silent Way than Interstellar Space: a quietly intense melange of pulsing beats, acoustic guitar strum, ringing vibraphone and organ washes. Add electric guitar buzzing underneath dreamy, nearly whispered vocals, and ATNTIIO is more mood swing than song cycle.

Yo La Tengo have stripped away layers of electric guitar chaos from their sound. Is it so we can hear their voices? So they can hear each other? Whatever the reason, Georgia and Ira's most audible and distinctive vocal performances to date are genuinely intimate and affecting. The quieter settings allow other subtle details to emerge: guest Susie Ibarra's percussion on the first single, "Saturday," high close harmonies swelling in from nowhere, Hubley's delicate brushwork, the gorgeous shimmer of vibes and mellotron.

Pop culture references usually abound on Yo La Tengo track listings, and continue here. "Last Days of Disco" is a modal pop song, Ira reminiscing about a distant first meeting, his vocals and guitar cruising lightly over Georgia and James's polyrhythmic underpinning. "The Crying of Lot G," title suggestive of notoriously byzantine author Thomas Pynchon, is ironically the most lyrically naked and literal song on the album. It's also the most direct paean to the internal ebb and flow of love they've ever written, with Kaplan speak-singing "You say all we do is fight, and I think, 'Gee, I don't know if that's true...'" over an ambient 50's-style weeper. A cover of disco hitmaker George McRae's "You Can Have it All" follows and features Hubley sleepily declaring her heart over Kaplan's AM-radio "ba-ba-da"s ping-ponging in the background and funky soul string accents (courtesy engineer David Henry and his cello). The band's approach to disco cheese is loving and unironic and raises the song above its station in pop's hierarchy; it could be a Yo La Tengo song, whereas the next song, "Tears Are In Your Eyes" sounds achingly classic enough to be a cover of a lost country ballad.

Such are the gifts of Yo La Tengo. They are a pop band, but don't just write pop songs; they write what can only be described as Yo La Tengo songs. By not rocking out, Ira, Georgia and James have made a record which shows how tight-knit a musical unit the trio have become. They are like a three-cornered atom harnessing its energy to the point where blinding explosions are no longer necessary to emanate power.

Jazz critic Nat Hentoff once described jazz as "a continual autobiography, or rather a continuum of intersecting autobiographies, one's own and those of the musicians with whom one plays."

Yo La Tengo don't play jazz, but And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out is the sound of surprise, and it is the latest chapter in their fascinating autobiography.