Yo La Tengo

Pre-Release

Essential Albums

  • And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out
    And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out
    And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out

    2000

  • I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One (25th Anniversary Deluxe Edition)
    I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One (25th Anniversary Deluxe Edition)
    I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One (25th Anniversary Deluxe Edition)

    Years before the term “curator” entered the conversation as shorthand for artists who organise what’s already around them instead of generating something altogether new, the New Jersey-based indie band Yo La Tengo were curators: a group who seemed to take their influences more seriously than their originality, who brought together disparate styles—cheeky bossa nova (“Center of Gravity”), noisy Beach Boys covers (“Little Honda”), 10-minute drones (“Spec Bebop”) and two-minute country pop (“One PM Again”)—in ways that felt whole. To 21st-century ears, the range of <I>I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One</I> might sound familiar—after all, with the musical universe at your fingertips, why not listen to everything?—but in 1997, it was a quiet revolution: Here was indie rock without guitars (“Autumn Sweater”) and feedback-heavy art songs made by the quiet family who runs the corner store or lives upstairs (“We’re an American Band”). The template isn’t so much the pop album as the mixtape or playlist—a form that, when done well, can open your ears to new sounds and connections. And while they sing about romance with sweetness (“My Little Corner of the World”) and reticence (“Shadows”), you feel their bond the most when they say nothing at all (“Green Arrow”).

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About Yo La Tengo

Founded in Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1984, indie lifers Yo La Tengo are inventors of a sound that is simultaneously innovative and classic. Since the knotty fusions of guitar feedback and organ drone of classic albums like 1993’s Painful, the trio of Ira Kaplan, Georgia Hubley and James McNew has embodied post-rock’s forward-thinking futurist impulses; at the same time, their classic melodies, country leanings and well-documented love of covers (on albums like 1990’s Fakebook LP and 2020’s Sleepless Night EP) confirm them as timeless keepers of the American songbook. No matter the style of any given song, what might best define the group is their grasp of nuance: Even at its most incendiary, their smouldering guitar lines feel as cosy as a wool cardigan, and Kaplan and Hubley’s hushed harmonies lend the music an unmistakable intimacy. Ambitiously atmospheric outings like 2000’s over-17-minute “Night Falls on Hoboken” aren’t just formal experiments: They’re proof of Yo La Tengo’s determination to follow a song wherever it leads them.

FROM
Hoboken, NJ, United States
FORMED
1984
GENRE
Alternative

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