Life must be busy for Yo La Tengo. Between being one of the quintessential bands of the 90s, a walking encyclopedia of cover tunes, and the group your friends have been billing as the only “mature” indie rock band that matters for the last two decades, its hard to believe they’ve had time to act out Seinfeld episodes on stage (seriously, look it up). So maybe that’s why they sound their best when things are slowed down and dragged out; when song structure is tossed to the wayside and four chords is all that’s needed to mesmerize an audience with relentlessly building waves of geeky, noisy bliss.
Starting with 1993’s Painful, Yo La Tengo created a tradition of closing their albums with extended guitar meditations, slowly easing listeners out of their world and back into reality with some of the most explosive jamming to ever emerge from Hoboken. It’s tempting to just shut up and let another jammy masterpiece fry your brains… so I will.
A lot can be said for the sheer quality and depth of YLT’s quieter, sustained meditations like the handful of songs from I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One and the entirety of And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out, but these final dying roars are what I always come back to in the end. Does that make me a shallow Yo La Tengo fan? Maybe, but with crunchy, skronky noise this beautiful how can I say no?
