When Yo La Tengo play live, there is a lone microphone situated front and centre. Aside from the couple of times that Georgia Hubley steps out from behind her drums and sings a lead vocal, it remains largely unused, to the extent that its purpose seems symbolic more than anything else. It’s almost as if there is a lost, mythic band member, a Brian Jones-like figure whose memory is kept alive by a single thin mic stand. The musical equivalent of a baseball team retiring the number of a revered former player. But as soon as the band start playing, it becomes obvious that the gap in the middle of the stage does not signify a lack or a loss. On the contrary, it acts as a focal point where the – for want of a better term – psychic energy of the band coalesces. It’s where the magic happens, invisible, enthralling.
I was late coming to Yo La Tengo, and my first real experience of them was in a live setting. After that first gig at the Oxford Zodiac (or whatever it’s called now), I found myself digging deeper into an extensive and bewilderingly varied back catalogue – bouncing from dream pop to noise rock via doo-wop, grunge and ambient drones – and in a few days, or maybe it was more like a few weeks, I felt that I was well on my way to being an aficionado. At that point, Summer Sun was probably their most recent record. It became a personal favourite and remains so, though now it’s one of many. So it’s great to hear Season of the Shark from that album getting an airing tonight. It’s a limpid, soft-edged moment, one of a handful in tonight’s gig, acting as a kind of palate cleanser or buffer zone, a moment for the eardrums to rest and recuperate before another long section of kraut-influenced groove and white guitar noise.
SWX is a good venue for Yo La Tengo. An unpretentious former club with good sound and a reasonable view. I’m here with the gig buddy who introduced me to the band all those years ago and who is now a regular on the Bristol live music scene. The group, known for their ability to switch styles on a whim, seem to have changed less than us. The onstage chat is minimal, but the chemistry is as sweet as ever: what’s obvious is how much they seem to be enjoying it after all these years. Or rather how into it they are, how committed to the cause of making thrilling, visceral music that always sounds a tiny bit familiar and never quite like anyone else. Their willingness to experiment is made visible in their onstage fluidity – all three have a go on the guitar at some point in the evening, all of them plus a roadie have a stint on keys, and they all sing a lead vocal. At one point, bassist James McNew takes over from Hubley behind the drum kit. Ira Kaplan’s guitars are pounded into submission, jettisoned and replaced on a regular basis.
There is no support tonight, and two mammoth sets plus an inevitable encore, so the band have to pull off something special to keep attention levels high. The first half of the show features a glut of material from the unsurprisingly ace new album This Stupid World. They open up with the cold shower of the title track – an acoustic version, but still bracing, immediately enveloping – and follow it with This Stupid World’s first song, Sinatra Drive Breakdown, a song that perfects their unique brand of urban kosmische: Fausty, Velvety rhythms and sheets of guitar that come in hard and aslant, like rain, all punctuated by Kaplan’s disarmingly calm vocals. In the big shake-up, this might well go down as one of their great songs, and they do it justice tonight.
We are also treated to the quiet country-inflected pop of Aselestine, with Hubley’s singing as undemonstratively assured as ever and the anxious, contained energy of Until It Happens. The first half ends, like the new album, with the engulfing, atmospheric Miles Away, somehow bigger and fuller than its recorded counterpart. It has a slowcore glide and twitchy synthesised drums that are a perfect match for Hubley’s voice.
Another first-half highlight is The Ballad of Red Buckets, which first appeared on 1995’s Electr-O-Pura and was reworked two decades later for Stuff Like That There. It has a soft-focussed twang offset against a rhythmic thump. Big Day Coming, which dates back to the early 1990s, has a wide-eyed sincerity: Hubley and Kaplan’s voices seem to cling together as they step into an unknown future. I Feel Like Going Home cloaks its lyrical anxieties in a comforting swirl.
The volume levels go up in the second half, and the band bring out some old favourites. Cherry Chapstick sees them morph into a thrashy, surfy power trio, with McNew doing his stint on drums while Hubley and Kaplan squeal and riff on twin guitars. From A Motel 6 purrs, grumbles and explodes into a kind of post-grunge guitar meltdown. Serpentine reaches right back to 1987’s New Wave Hot Dogs – amidst the stabby organs and clipped guitar is the kernel of what would become Yo La Tengo’s signature sound, or at least a facet of it. Two more new tracks – the rhythmically complex glimmer of Brain Capers, complete with searing guitars, and Fallout, with its winning vocal harmonies – don’t feel out of place amongst the revered older material.
Throughout, the trio continue to switch positions, aligning like planets and revolving around that single, invisible, central storm. At certain points – especially on the manic Sudden Organ – Kaplan seems possessed by a kind of alien electricity, something green and liberating that runs through his veins, and he writhes and contorts with a fervour that can only come from a genuine passion for the moment. He is particularly animated during what is perhaps the night’s most impressive section, the second set’s last three songs. The crowd-pleasing pairing of the irresistible Sugarcube and the glorious noise-pop of Tom Courtenay act as a kind of gingerbread house in the woods, inside which lurks a quarter of an hour of Pass The Hatchet, I Think I’m Goodkind. McNew stands unflappable and unmoving, pounding out a simple but thoroughly effective bassline, locked into that kraut-rock groove with Hubley’s brutal, solid drumming. Kaplan kneels, crouches and twists as his guitar flips out for minutes at a time, fighting him like an unruly animal before settling down, running alongside the rhythm for a while, flaring up again, and finally coming to a kind of rest. It’s uneasy, exhilarating.
It’s customary for Yo La Tengo to give us some interesting cover versions, and they oblige in the three-song encore. The high-energy R&B of Rex Garvin’s Emulsified provides three minutes of sheer, condensed fun, and Love’s A Message To Pretty is a tender acoustic ballad. Most moving of all is the closer, My Little Corner of the World, which has become Georgia Hubley’s calling-card since it appeared on I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One. Hubley takes up that vacant position in centre stage and draws both audience and band members towards her, a moment of intimacy that provides a fitting end to an evening with one of the world’s best live bands.
Order This Stupid World here: https://ylt.ffm.to/thisstupidworld