YO LA TENGO
An expansive, subdued opus from the New Jersey trio. By Stephen Deusner
Yo La Tengo weren’t trying to make an album when they made their new album. The Hoboken, new Jersey, trio were trying to learn a new computer program, which meant bassist and default producer James Mcnew would record guitarist Ira Kaplan and drummer georgia Hubley messing around in the studio, just capturing sounds that he could practise manipulating. They weren’t jamming and they weren’t playing anything they imagined would become songs, but kept playing around until these scraps and castoffs coalesced into songs and the songs coalesced into There’s A Riot Going On.
In the 30 years since their debut, Yo La Tengo had never worked this way. Like many bands, they jammed together in their rehearsal space and on the road to write songs for their studio albums, developing ideas between the three of them. There’s A Riot Going On wasn’t quite accidental, but this slightly haphazard process must have been refreshing, leaving more room for serendipity and surprise.
The process might be wildly different for the trio, but the product is wildly familiar. While it’s their most inventive record in a decade, there’s nothing on here too far removed from what they’ve done in the past. It’s just that all those familiar Yo La Tengo elements have been tweaked just enough to lend Riot… a distinct identity within their sprawling catalogue. It has that familiar, steady drumbeat that’s too warm and grounded to be called kosmische; it also has the acute hooks and exactingly composed songs we expect from their albums, even if they are pulled into slightly new shapes.
Mcnew assembled all of these songs in ProTools – another first for the band – which allowed him to layer endless sounds and instruments atop one another. There’s more clatter in the music, more knots in the rhythms, finer gradients in the drones, more grain in the ambience. and yet it’s also very quiet and introverted, losing the string arrangements and R&B flourishes of 2013’s Fade and 2009’s Popular Songs. at times Riot… recalls the lo-fi palette, if not the distortion-soaked sound, of their earliest albums, yet it’s intimate enough to sound private, like you’re eavesdropping on the players’ inner monologues.
That album title, however, suggests a political engagement – or at least an acknowledgement of the chaotic world into which they’re releasing There’s A
Riot Going On. It is, of course, a reference to Sly & The Family Stone’s 1971 album, which itself was a response to Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On from the same year. Kaplan theorises that it might double as a nod to “Riot in Cell Block #9” [see
Q&A]. Both of those albums pose thorny questions to and about the world around them, but Yo La Tengo aren’t quite so outgoing. Even if the thrumming instrumental opener “You Are Here” plants its flag in the here and now, the trio only allude to some larger conflagration happening just off-screen, some insurrection going on deep in the background of these songs. It manifests in the clatter of percussion on the jazz-damaged “Above The Sound” and the errant acoustic strums of the minimalist “Dream Dream Away”, but also in a melancholy that pervades every note of the album.
Georgia Hubley paints her room bright colours on “Shades Of Blue”, a Brill Building pop song that’s both effervescent and despondent, but all the vibrant tints only darken the space: “Red, orange or yellow… doesn’t matter what’s the hue,” she sings, resigned to the funk in which she finds herself. Kaplan gauges her moods carefully against the burbling motorik rhythms of “She May, She Might”, which is sequenced as a response to “Shades Of Blue”. “She hears, not quite, your voice, but hasn’t got the words to reply,” he observes, his tone quizzical yet sympathetic.
The rest of Riot… chronicles their efforts to escape such an inescapable depression, the songs forming conversations between these two romantic and musical partners who’ve been married almost as long as Yo La Tengo has been a band. Even if these songs aren’t technically autobiographical – even if they’re simply playing roles in these songs – there’s an intense bittersweet quality to these ruminations on commitment and cohabitation, not to mention a sneaky humour in Kaplan’s self-deprecations. “I’m just some guy with too much pride and all that implies,” he admits on “For You Too”. “I won’t deny, way too snide.”
Hubley, meanwhile, simply longs for escape on the daydreamy “Polynesia #1”, as though tropical islands and tropical music are all she needs to brighten her mood. Few Yo La Tengo albums have such a powerful or prominent narrative thrust, even if they leave it open-ended as the album winds down. Closer “Here You Are” offers something like a prescription for making your way through the world: “We ignore the crap, don’t answer questions we didn’t ask.” That Kaplan’s voice is buried so deep in the mix that the lyrics are barely discernible doesn’t diminishes the power of that statement. It just takes repeated spins – or a glance at the lyric sheet – to make sense of it. According to Kaplan, that title came early in the album-making process, first as a joke for this non-album they were making and later as a title the music seemed to choose for itself. They were aware of the weight of the word ‘riot’, but perhaps There’s A Riot Going
On merely reflects their close engagement with pop music, their love of old songs and styles whose influence isn’t always detectable in their own albums. The parameters in which Yo La Tengo operate may be fairly circumscribed – which is another way of saying they make the most of their limitations – but the trio’s tastes know no bounds. They’re interested in a little of everything, in every scene, every era, every pop trend, and they’re able to translate seemingly any song or style to that Yo La Tengo sound.
Throughout their decades together, they’ve amassed a vault of covers, ranging from the Muscle Shoals R&B classic “I’m Your Puppet” to The Simpsons theme to Doug Sahm’s “Mendocino” (from their 2006 collection of by-request cover songs, Yo La Tengo Is Murdering The Classics).
They don’t cover Sly Stone or Marvin Gaye on There’s A Riot Going On – or anybody else for that matter. Every song is an original, but that doesn’t mean they don’t reach deep into pop history for inspiration. “Shades Of Blue” recalls “In My Room” both in its setting and in its mood; you can imagine Hubley spinning The Beach Boys while she compares paint swatches. “Forever” punctuates Kaplan’s verses with a round of heavily reverbed shoowop-shoo-wop, echoing the Flamingos’ “I Only Have Eyes For You”.
Such reference points aren’t ends in and of themselves, but starting points to develop new ideas and find new flourishes. Riot… is busy with memorable sounds, like the endlessly dissembling percussion on “Dream Dream Away”, or the soft-focus exotica of “Esportes Casual”, or the jazzbo bassline that defines and ultimately disrupts “Above The Sound”. In that regard, it’s a remarkably immersive and generous album, emotionally as well as musically. Hubley, Kaplan and McNew create small, quiet riots by seeking solace and inspiration in the pop music of the past, perhaps understanding on some level that Yo La Tengo might offer the same to their listeners.