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Yo La Tengo, I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass

reviewed by dave heaton

Everyone's writing about Yo La Tengo's new album like it's some sort of definitive statement, summing up everything they've done in their 20-year career…when really all they mean to say is that it's diverse. But what Yo La Tengo album isn't? Even their last two albums, generally toned-down affairs with one consistent mood, had moments of surprise within them. Perhaps it's the name of the album's final 12-minute song, "The Story of Yo La Tango", which even with its playful misspelling has a demeanor of 'we're leaving one last statement behind". Though if you know anything about Yo La Tengo, you know they like to joke around. That's written right into the album title.

That playfulness is a one of the two main things that's missed when critics lazily write "this sums up everything the band has done", when most of it sounds nothing like anything the band has done before. The other thing that's missed is how much the album does resemble, in tone, the last two albums. It shares with them an atmosphere of quiet mystery, particularly in tracks like the lonely ballad "I Feel Like Going Home" and the surprising 8-minute piano-led mood-piece "Daphnia".

"Daphnia" is a gorgeous, quiet song filled with shadows, and its presence in the middle of the album does come as a surprise. But it's an album filled with surprises, one that seems built around the idea of trying something new. It's bookended by 10+-minute guitar-based jams that also are rambling pop songs, and in that hybrid sound different from all the jams of Yo La Tengo's past. And in between is a whole assortment of treats and treasures, many of them light and airy, with piano ever-present and Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley's voices often singing light and airy to match. The instrumentation is diverse and the song styles even more so.

There's the absolutely addictive "Mr. Tough", with Kaplan singing high and gentle over a jazzy rhythm while beckoning a tough guy to meet him on the dance floor and dance their problems away. There's "Black Flowers", a sweet, delicate, James McNew-sung early-morning pop song that rises out of the end of "Mr Tough" like a particularly breathtaking sunrise. There's the walking-to-school piano that supports Kaplan's open-hearted proclamation "Sometimes I Don't Get You," a complicated love song within a discography of complicated love songs. "The Weakest Part" occupies similar territory, and is absolutely stunning.

Then there's the trashy garage-rock stomper "Watch Out for Me Ronnie", ablaze on its own. And the odd recitation Hubley sings over an organ-and-percussion groove on "The Room Got Heavy". And so much more. It's the Yo La Tengo album that most resembles undiscovered territory, the one where they seem most interested in fooling around and seeing where it gets them. They've always been a multi-dimensional band, and they seem especially so here. It's a fascinating album that's enjoyable start to finish, and always leaves me wanting to go back and find that one song again, or that one sound, or lyric, or style...and each time it's a different one.

{www.matadorrecords.com}


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