FROM SEA URCHINS TO SUN RA

Three experimental releases that predict There’s A Riot Going On

The Sounds Of The Sounds Of Science EGON, 2002

The trio composed these instrumentals as loose soundtracks to the short documentaries of director Jean Painlevé. They evoke the underwater milieu of these films in intriguing ways, in the wavelike guitars and in the air-bubble burble of McNew’s bass. The songs bend to the will of the film, which means the band shifts almost constantly from amphibious ambience to slo-mo exotica to cinematic post-rock.

Nuclear War EP MATADOR, 2002

Sun Ra’s Cold War protest stomp, released in 1982 as a jab at Reagan, had been a staple of Yo La Tengo’s live shows long before they set their version down on tape. Or, more accurately, their versions. This EP includes four very different arrangements of the song, each one wild and weird and conveying the same sense of encroaching dread.

Today Is the Day! EP MATADOR, 2003

Yo La Tengo cover themselves on this EP, a postscript to their 10th studio album, Summer

Sun. They render the title track newly noisy and boisterous to kick things off, and end with a shushed version of “Cherry Chapstick”, originally distorted and feral on 2000’s …And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside

Out. The result is a collection that reveals just how elastic their songs can be.