FEATURED INTERVIEWS

Sonic Youth, 2009

Grizzly Bear, 2009

Yo La Tengo, 2009

Michael Stipe, 2008

Stephen Malkmus, 2008

Conor Oberst, 2007

The Long Blondes, 2006



FEATURED REVIEWS

Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks, 2008

Beach House, 2008

The Clientele, 2007

Frida Hyvönen, 2006

Ladybug Transistor, 2006

Hidden Cameras, 2006

Yo La Tengo
Bring on the Major Leagues
+ Big Takeover magazine, Fall 2009 +


When invited to an opportunity to hear the new Yo La Tengo album Popular Songs  a full two months before its scheduled release, I acceded with alacrity. The event, held at NYC’s Tribeca Screening Room, included a speech by Matador head Gerard Cosloy, eloquently commemorating the band’s 25th  anniversary, along with dubious promises of pedicures. No pedicures materialized, but sitting in an auditorium with around twenty other music journalists, an element of surreality sunk in, listening to an album with little more than the graphic of the record’s cover art to look at in a dark room for an hour. “Sort of Warhol-esque,” band leader Ira Kaplan laughs. “Could’ve used a projection of the Empire State Building in the background.”
    
But that brings up a larger issue, one of appreciating music as an art form instead of, to borrow from the parlance of Thom Yorke, idle fridge buzz. Getting people to pay attention to a record all the way through has become a Sisyphean challenge for artists. Reading interviews with Peter Buck and Neil Young in the early ‘90s about the betrayal inflicted upon them when the music industry eschewed LPs in favor of the hefty profit margins of CDs never hit home for me until recently. But it always has with Kaplan. “Well, I think there’s no accident that people’s relationship to music got more casual with the CD era and has continued to grow more casual with downloading. The LP and 45 formats breed an intense relationship with the music”
    
So Yo La Tengo soldier on, releasing the exceedingly brilliant double LP Popular Songs, an eclectic masterpiece traversing the disparate terrain of urbane Motown (“If It’s True”), chiming Flying Nun-esque pop (“Avalon or Someone Very Similar”), to a caustic  Nuggets-esque rocker (“Nothing to Hide”), while maintaining the signifiers that make the band so great -- the androgynous harmonizing of Kaplan and his wife, drummer Georgia Hubley, and his histrionic guitar freakouts. Together, with bassist James McNew, they engender an elusive alchemy, one only attainable by a band who’ve spanned over two decades.
    
All of this is prosaic to Kaplan, who prefers to enthuse about the band’s recent gig at Keyspan Park in Coney Island with Wilco. (“It was great to play in a Mets minor league park. We’re all fans”), to discussing The Simpsons, namely getting Sideshow Bob’s (actually Kelsey Grammar’s) autograph years ago while performing on Late Night With Conan O’Brien. “He signed a bubblegum card for me ‘Die, Bart, die,’” he laughs.
    
But at his heart, Kaplan is clearly a record geek, having been a critic long ago for The New York Rocker. He speaks with reverent passion over recent finds. “We just got the new Clean record yesterday, and that’s always a gift from… somewhere. The Move box set is so amazing. I didn’t think they could find anything people hadn’t heard. It was really mind-boggling.”
    
Kaplan clearly has an intense relationship with the music he loves, and with albums as soulful as Popular Songs, it’s likely that his fans will continue to as well.