Three songs, seven minutes. Yeah Yeah Yeah's aren't messin' around. The hot-shit New Yorkers pack every minute full of gritty, high energy, lo-fi, post-glam rockn'fuckn'roll. Singer Karen O seemed to bely a little vulnerability in between shrieks on their debut e.p., but here she exudes confidence. YYY's would be an ideal band to see in someone's packed living room; too bad their lightning fast rise to fame deprives us of that experience! This single is another teaser before the release of their debut full length, expected soon-ish.
A kinder gentler YYY's can be found on their follow up to Fever To Tell, the record which made them international superstars. We are not averse to bands softening their sound as long as they are also finding new more subtle, interesting and pleasing ways to express themselves. The moment Show Your Bones begins it becomes clear that this is a shinier glossier more pop affair. There are a few moments of the more rocking YYY's scattered throughout the disc but this is much more about their full on pop leanings. The first song (and many others on this album) sounds remarkably like it came from Tegan & Sara's latest album So Jealous. Indeed these catchy girl-sung tunes might lure some fans over from those sisters' camp. Her vocals also recall those appealing '80s female singers such as Debbie Harry, Dale Bozzio, and Siouxsie. Perhaps Karen O and co. are targeting the teenage girl population? Not sure, but these are certainly some toned down and tidily groomed YYYs who've made themselves totally presentable for the masses. Really, these tunes are absolutely ripe for some John Hughes movie soundtrack!
This self released five-track ep by up and coming Brooklyn trio is going to give the comparatively more famous White Stripes a run for their money. When she's not absolutely screaming, the girl lead singer wails with a strong gravelly voice and that trembly
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
These guys are really tough to figure out, we were never that into them actually, until we heard one of their tracks on a Mojo compilation of all places, and even weirder it was a sort of No Depression / Americana style collection, with groups like Iron & Wine, The Low Anthem, and their sound, while slightly twangy, was way more quirky and electronic, a sort of twisted cabaret pop, we ended up digging that record quite a bit, so were excited to hear this new one.
Right off the bat, it's a weirdo winner, processed garbled vocals, over a strange plodding electronic beat, washed over by lush layers of shimmery sound, like a Phoenix song played at 16 rpm, lugubrious and warbly, but strangely appealing. The next song though reveals the band's true colors, which seem to lie more along the lines of groups like Sparks or Pretty And Nice, slightly twisted pop, layered synths, lush production, looped electronic rhythms, skittery drum machines, "Madder Red" introduces lots of "ooooohs" and some abstract tribal drumming, multi tracked vocals, for a sort of more earth take on Animal Collective's abstract pop, which is pretty much where Yeasayer are situated, they definitely have a Pitchfork vibe, their sound definitely absorbing elements of Animal Collective, TV On The Radio, that sort of almost-mainstream pop, but for our money, Yeasayer are just a bit more odd, they definitely have the total pop gene, but they also seem inclined to fuck it up, whether with weird production, strange rhythms, vocal processing, everything infused with a sort of tweaked new wave vibe. Definitely seems like an acquired taste, but could very well be a weird music gateway for folks who want to start their strange sonic education slowly. For the rest of us, it's a pretty cool, slightly off kilter, electronic pop record, that will definitely fit perfectly on your shelf next to records by all of the above mentioned bands... Cool!
As we sit in the middle of an atypical heatwave here in San Francisco it's made us think hard about what our summer jams are going to be, and luckily the debut album from Yelle has just hit stateside and we can officially proclaim that this will be one of our party records of summer '08! Hailing from France, Yelle evokes that special infectious magic of French pop in all its incarnations with a healthy dose of electro and a fun hip-hop disposition. It's sort of how we would imagine a collaboration between Stereo Total and M.I.A. would sound. Yelle is fun and full of color but sharp and strong enough sounding so it doesn't just become disposable fluff. This is exactly what we hoped would be playing everytime we ever walked into a dance club. Suave and and so damn sassy!
Oh-la-la - this young French lady makes some of the most exciting and satisfying dance music around. With her second album she's proven she is no fluke, or one hit wonder, as this is just as action packed, fun filled, and free flowing as her great debut. It's really hard to make a solid dance record that doesn't just rely on a few hits and then the rest is just forgettable filler, Yelle has no room for filler in her life, as every single song on here brings the goods with such exciting results. This makes us think of what it might sound like if some really cool French electro-producers produced a record by Kylie Minogue or Goldfrapp. But it's really Yelle's energy and charisma that makes her stand way ahead of the electro-dance-pop pack, as you always feel such a human and real element driving these contagious songs. This has summer jams of '11 written all over it!
Connecticut label Music Fellowship is doing a series of three-way split cds -- we already reviewed the second release in the series, the lovely "Crickets And Fireflies" by the triumverate of Kinski/Paik/Surface of Eceyon. Now, here's the first, and like volume two it's also a bunch of spaced out drone-on indie rock, music well in keeping with the photo of the Northern Lights that adorns the cover. Yellow6 is a British feller we're not familiar with, looping his guitar nicely. Rothko should be more familiar, and with them it's not guitars -- it's basses. Last but not least Landing work their improv-drone magic. ----* ----* Compilations : ----*
Many of the sounds coming out of the recent surge of girl group inspired bands that we've been digging have been more on the garage and lo-fi rocking side of things, but Yellow Fever are mining that same sort of girl group glory with a more direct song based approach with totally stunning results. We hear echoes of the Young Marble Giants and their disciples, like Klang or Quixotic, albeit slightly more twee. We'd imagine that if Calvin Johnson heard this he would sign YF to K in a heartbeat, the music these gals conjure up definitely has many of the same endearing qualities of some of our favorite K records over the years.
Get Grass Widow and Girls At Dawn out of the fuzzy dirty garage, and bring them upstairs to the warm and comfy living room and you're getting an idea of where Yellow Fever are coming from. The songs are really compact and stripped down. Like Kim Deal and Julie Doiron doing extra minimal Aislers Set covers. Yellow Fever are amongst an awesome new breed of bands from Austin, Texas who are starting to get wider attention (weird that they weren't included on the new Matador compilation, Casual Victim Pile featuring a bunch of other bands from Austin). But it does make perfect sense that it's their friends the Vivian Girls who have released this on their own record label, Wild World, they for sure share a similar spirit and plenty of musical reference points, even though they approach their sounds from slightly different angels.
This is totally hitting the spot!
The infamous Yellow Swans return -- this time without any D-something word in front -- and continue to blur the line between noise rock and good ol' noise. Given that they have approximately a billion tape/cd-r/whatever releases, you may want to assume that all the tricks are out of the hat and this is just in fact another Yellow Swans record, but you'd be wrong. At All Ends is somewhat of a departure from much of their previous work, and it focuses more -- okay, a bit more -- on melody and song structure. Gorgeous sheets of noise, gut-punching blasts of sonic destruction, percussion and vocals both reverbed and distorted into total oblivion, and an underlying sense of danceable rhythm. Through it all, this album is one of those noise rock epics that proves the it-all-sounds-the-same haters wrong and shows that its possible to celebrate, break some shit, AND have a good time doing it. Recommended!
1st actual cd from these exciting Bay Area noisemakers.
Deterioration was originally released as a tour only cassette, which is interesting given that it seems more instantly accessible than many of their more widely available and well-known records. Of course, even though this Portland duo has since broken up, it's going to take a while to slowly sift through their catalog and really make sense of it all. The earlier days found these guys making overtly political noise tracks, devoid of really any discernible melody at all. Towards the end, the final releases (the 12" split with Ex-Cocaine, the 12" collaboration with Burning Star Core, the full length At All Ends, etc.) showed a somewhat different side. More obviously psychedelic, more melodic, and seemingly an increased attention being paid to composition. Not to say that the older tracks were completely improvised, because we can't definitively say without asking, but there is a greater cohesion and flow with releases like this one. It really is a shame the guys parted ways, because the last year or so of their records seemed like one collective Revolver. If you're a fan of YS and haven't picked up anything in a while, you'd be well-served to check this one out.
It's hard to believe these guys broke up close to two years ago, they keep a higher profile than most active bands, and they definitely release more records than lots of proper not-defunct outfits, but we're not complaining, amongst the many floorcore bands out there, these guys definitely shone brightly, whereas most were content to just plug in a rack of effects and make an ear splitting racket, these guys always did more with their noise(s), sometimes subtly, sometimes not so, even at their noisiest and most abrasive, they infused their crunch and skree with melody and texture, and were definitely capable of crafting some moments of sublime beauty, which is where this newest, and supposedly final Yellow Swans release positions itself. Gorgeously ambient, but Yellow Swans ambient, which means rife with strange layers, and sublimated rhythms, noise, but soft noise, the first track explodes in a cloud of grey noise, but it never gets too harsh, instead the duo soften the edges, add a lurching buried pulse, wrapping everything in a gauze of smeared melody, and woozy shimmer, it almost sounds like krautrock broadcast via shortwave and played back on a wax cylinder, but at extremely high volume, gritty, and hissy, but washed out and dreamlike, all wrapped around a skeletal rhythm, looped and mesmeric, it's only 4 minutes, but we definitely could have dug this track stretched out to fill up the whole record. The 13+ minute "Opt Out" begins all spaced out and dreamy, lots of shifting textures, undulating layers, hazy chordal streaks way off in the distance, eventually building to a white hot squall of psych noise, that is definitely harsh and heavy, but within the chaos of colliding sound particles, rhythms skitter subtly, melodies loop and intertwine, it's almost like pretty Merzbow, if that were even possible, which it seems it is...
The rest of the record dials back the noise, instead opting to drift and shimmer and creep, letting the sounds ooze and sprawl, sending notes into the ether, like sonic flower petals drifting on a swirling churning black stream, bits of guitar chime and ring out, the recording glitches out, sound cut out, throb, and pulse, swells of almost SUNNO)))-like buzz surface and then dissipate, streaks of near pop ambience hover over bells and chimes, and looped melodies, fractured chunks of warm whirring sound, crackle and hiss and rumble crafted into crystalline expanses of prismatic glow, long ominous drones unfurl into hushed black ambience, shot through with warm, languid psych guitar skree, with the tracks occasionally building to a howling lysergic speaker shredding climax, but just as often splintering into warped shards of melted muted melody, and allowed to drift lazily and slowly settle into the darkness below, or rise to the heavens above. So gorgeous. These guys are definitely missed.
The vinyl version (and ONLY the vinyl version) includes a bonus disc, featuring 70 minutes of extra music, including what sound like reworked and extended versions of some of the songs on the record proper...
Another archival release from the now defunct and greatly missed floorcore noise duo Yellow Swans. We have not been able to keep this in stock, we sold out twice before we had a chance to review it, and now we have 5 copies, maybe the last 5 copies, as this was limited to 500 copies and is already sold out and out of print at the label. So act fast and be lucky if you want one of these.
This Mort Aux Vaches session from 2007 finds the 'Swans at their heaviest and noisiest. On first listen, it's a wild psychedelic squall, heaving walls of crumbling distortion and blown out buzz, Skullflower, Total, that sort of thing, but closer listening reveals all sorts of prettiness beneath, lilting melodies, haunting refrains, keening feedback, unlikely harmonies, in fact, the more you listen, the more the 'noise' seems to peel back, letting the strange melodic beauty underneath shine through. Which was sort of the magic of the Yellow Swans, creating massive roiling swirls of chaotic beauty, sculpting otherwise harsh and hellish sonics into impossibly beautiful soundscapes, weaving buzz and rumble and drone and whir and howl and grind and crunch into dense shimmering clouds of otherworldly sound.
INCREDIBLE PACKAGING, maybe the most over the top Mort Aux Vaches yet, the usual fold over sleeve held shut by a little metal fastener, but affixed to the front a three dimensional sort-of-sculpture, depicting a little girl and a yellow swan, an image from some old storybook but rendered in three dimensions like it was pried off the front of some old building. Super cool.
And again, we only have FIVE copies. Be prepared to be disappointed... Sorry.
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It's been a seriously productive year for the Yellow Swans. Multiple cd-r releases, some 7"s, a Australian tour with pals the Grey Daturas, as well as loads of splits and collaaborations with folks like Axolotl and the Skaters as well as teaming up with the Daturas for a couple releases as well. Phew! But thankfully, there seems to be no end in sight. With all those releases, it's a bit surprising to realize the Yellow Swans only have one proper non cd-r release, and that one flew so far under tha radar we wouldn't have known about it at all had one not drifted through here used a while back. So here we have a brand new, shiny silver, actual cd, non-cd-r, blast of Yellow Swans nooooooooooize! Joined on a few of the tracks by fellow noisy folks Inca Ore, Gerritt and Christina Carter (of Charalambides), Psychic Secession is another gorgeous chunk of sweet sweet noise, equal parts glistening shimmer, crushing and jagged skree, skittery diembodied rhythms, haunting ghostly vocals, blistering sheets of distorted electronics, squealing feedback, chiming reverb drenched percussion, glistening delicate ambience, even some ultra processed psychedelic rock, all woven into a dense chaotic and surprisingly gorgeous whole!
This will be coming out in the states on Load Records, but not until way later in the year, so for now we got this Australian import version which comes in a super spiffy oversized cardboard sleeve and is a completely different (supposedly 'noisier') mix than the forthcoming Load version!
Another one of those 'it had to happen' matchups. New Zealand's inimitable Campbell Kneale aka Birchville Cat Motel and the formerly Bay Area now PDX based noiserock dynamic duo The Yellow Swans. As we're huge fans of both of these outfits, it would take a pretty serious fumble to disappoint, and we're happy to report that this is anything but.
Two massively thick snarls of corrosive fuzz and buzz. This is some serious noise for sure. But as a testament to the skill at work here, this noise is imbued with all sorts of melody and color, for every harsh streak of blown out amp melting feedback, there is a delicate burbling melody, for every wall of skull crushing synth damage, there is a a smooth drifting smear of glistening shimmer. It's ugly on the outside, sure, but like your mom always told you, beauty is only skin deep, and just below the blistering scaly monster skin of these two bursts of furious amp damage, is all manner of loveliness, subtle tonal shifts, gloriously rich overtones constantly swirling and blurring together, it's a little like some Sunroof! wrapped in bit of Merzbow, or a dense swirl of Growing all wrapped up tight within a crunchy Masonna shell.
Sure sounds good to us...
Another prime match-up between two long time AQ favorites, who almost sound better together than they do apart. Portland's dynamic duo the Yellow Swans and one man violin terror Burning Star Core, together for this super limited lp, two shows recorded over the past couple years, both extended noise-drone fests.
The A side starts out surprisingly tranquil, sounding more like Sunroof! or the Double Leopards, here the trio are augmented by an extra member, another AQ fave, Mike Shiflet. A sea of bleary eyed faux sitar buzz beneath slippery Eastern sounding violin, sawing away in dense clouds of delay and reverb. A super hypnotic sonic sprawl that eventually explodes into a wall of psychedelic skree, blown out distorted guitars, malfunctioning electronics, jagged bursts of static, a furious freaked out noise jam.
The flipside came out a while back as a cd-r on the Yellow Swans' Jyrk label, but we only ever had 20 of those, so odds are most folks never got to hear it. Which was a shame as it is definitely some of the nicest stuff we've heard from either of these outfits. So here's one more chance to get an earful. Warm atonal guitar strum, angular and purposeful, mournful and minor key, drifts above a bed of skittery glitch and rumbling drones. Eventually the guitars disappear beneath a wild wooly sheet of shrieking sonic turbulence, a whirl of moaning melodies behind a thick curtain of freaked out feedback and squealing skree. Nice and noisy!
Pressed on thick 140 gram marbled red/purple vinyl, housed in a super swank sleeve, each one stickered and hand numbered. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!
A super limited tour only ep head to head matchup between Australia's Grey Daturas (whose most recent record Dead In The Woods was an aQ record of the week a while back) and Bay Area free noise duo the Yellow Swans, who just returned from a month on the road with their pals in the Daturas. This ep was only on sale at their shows in Australia and New Zealand, but we managed to get the last of their left over copies.
The first track is the Yellow Swans along with their pal White Rainbow, and together they stir up a static expanse of white noise and amp buzz and pink fuzz, a swirling ambient shhhhhhhhhhhhhhrrrrrr with various melodies and bits of guitar feedback and little snippets of noise and shards of sound drifting above and below and within the muted skree. Darn near tranquil in the Yellow Swans' universe, but by any one else's standards this is still a blast of white noise.
The Daturas take track two and they offer up a dual guitar dronefest, that sounds quite a bit like that weird tuning fork interdimensional transport thingie in the movie Phantasm. The sound of that thing was so appealing even when we were kids, maybe that's why we grew up to enjoy thick slabs of distorted guitar droning endlessly. But that's only the first half of the track, the second 8 minutes or so is a throbbing pummeling downtuned dirge with guitars squealing and churning and chugging and shrieking like two wild beats in a battle to the death over a fiercely pounding beat. An amazing slab of dreamy droney minimal stoner psych rock, for sure. Packaged in a cool oversize cardboard sleeve.
SUPER LIMITED. THESE ARE OUT OF PRINT AND LONG GONE. WE HAVE THE LAST 30 COPIES. ONCE THESE ARE GONE, THEY ARE GONE FOR GOOD.
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Latest in Not Not Fun's Bored Fortress 7" series, featuring two long time AQ faves.
Former Bay Area freenoise duo the Yellow Swans check in with probably their harshest heaviest sounds yet. A full on white hot soft noise assault, totally blown out and drenched in distortion, dripping with speaker melting crumble, a seriously punishing blast of brutality, BUT, hidden beneath it all is some serious dreaminess. A simple lilting melody, a bit melancholy, a bit mournful, drifts beneath a veritable sonic shitstorm imbuing the noise with emotion and feeling. Very few folks can make caustic noise sound this pretty, you gotta hand it to these guys...
The flipside features the Goslings, a husband / wife sludge rock duo from Florida, who we have been totally obsessed with when we first heard them back in 2005. This track demonstrates they still got it going on, so heavy, so impossibly pretty, so damaged and amazing.
Outrageously distorted guitar, so much so that it's not just crumbling, but melting into a weird black puddle, the amp literally falling to pieces, so in the red, that the riffs keep overwhelming the recording device adding all sorts of alien buzz and damaged Basinski like drop outs. It's a bit like Boris or SUNN))) produced by Faxed Head, but it's the Goslings, so you gotta toss in a dorky little Casio rhythm, and some drifty throaty female vocals. So what was once just a crumbling heap of melted guitars and chunks of desiccated amplifier, albeit an insanely cool one, becomes some sort of blissy dream sludge. And then there's the weird melodic slowcore outro, which sounds like Low run through a million broken distortion pedals...
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!!
Here's the latest Dark Yellow Swans...or you might better know them as simply Yellow Swans! As with most releases by the very DIY San Francisco fella Mike Donovan (Sic Alps, Big Techno Werewolves, Nam, Sounds Of The Barbary Coast, The Ropers, Dial Records), there is only going to be a very small homespun run of these made, so needless to say, don't snoooooze! Pssst... we also have a small number of some of Donovan's other Folding cassette releases, all with hand made covers -- a couple of short ones from Death Sentence: Panda and Donovan's own current band Sic Alps plus a compilation he compiled with artist Chris Johanson called SSSSSOSS2 and one by NVH with Six Organs Of Admittance's Ben Chasny. Dust off yer cassette deck!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Yen Pox took five years to follow up their devastating drone album "Blood Music" with the just released "New Dark Age" and it's been well worth the wait. This has already been hailed as the record of the year by Stefan Knappe of Troum / Drone Records. And if you are looking for something to fall neatly alongside Troum, Noisegate, and Lustmord, this is a perfect fit! Yen Pox -- the duo of Michael Hensley and Steven Hall -- have masterfully created a very cold album that is as majestic as it is bleak. Huge gaping drones swallow up reverb saturated metallic clanging, slow moving melodic figures, and frozen synthetic tones. Yen Pox's "New Dark Age" is a futurist vision of what life would be on the outskirts of solar system: awe-inspiring, isolated, and hostile.
Another Celebrate Psi Phenomena expat (having shared a terrific split cd-r with MCMS, now out of print) finds their way to our pals Last Visible Dog. Yermo offer up a glorious wash of cascading upper register dreaminess, like the sound of rubbed champagne glasses, crystalline and delicate, over an mesmerising thrum that subtly oscillates, creating an hypnotic almost-rhythm. The whole thing slowly builds in intensity until it's a howling storm of feedback and buzz, dotted with thick bursts of jagged NOISE, all washing over you in a wave of thick warm sound. Fans of Total, Vibracathedral Orchestra, Sunroof!, the Dead C and the like bset start paying close attention to Yermo, 'cause they have yet to disappoint!
Reissued, remastered, bonus track'd...one of the best Yes albums ever, and yes that IS indeed a compliment. Yes destroy all math-rock/fusion/prog contenders with this monster album.
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Instrumental Texas prog-psych outfit, dark bombastic stuff indeed, with heavy keyboard sounds and busy drums. If you picked up the Tarantula Hawk album (record of the week not long ago), this is kinda similar (they recently toured together in fact) but more overtly '70s-style proggy and Magma-oid, less grindy and metallic. Four long tracks, simultaneously hectic and spooky (sometimes just spooky). Cool.
After four long years, and sadly the premature passing of keyboard player Doug Ferguson (RIP), Texas prog-psych juggernaut YETI is back. Their year 2000 album Things to Come... was a dark debut of bombastic instrumental space-rock. This new effort now at last carries on from that record in spirited fashion, the band maybe now even darker and doomier since visited by death. Heavy, gloomy, and apocalyptic, the four long tracks here rumble mightily, signalling to all that when Yeti names an album Volume Obliteration Transcendence they're not kidding around! They still pay homage to their '70s influences (Magma, Universe Zero and so forth), but with more vocals this time, from anguished growls to bizarre choral arrangements, all bathed in distortion. Lumbering riffs and drums recall old Swans, while their spacey phased synths offer a touch of Goblin. Plodding yet hectic. Spacey yet dense. It's a bit like Magma meets Neurosis. And it's a lot like AQ-faves Tarantula Hawk, former tour- and label- mates to Yeti. (The two bands certainly share a lot of qualities -- and fans.) This is an intense, abyssic record utterly recommended for those into heaviness AND proginess. Has there been a darker, dirgier album with mellotron on it than this one?
Wow. The retun of Yeti. This makes 3 issues in 4 or 5 years, pretty crazy. Supposedly Yeti will now be a thrice a year concern but we'll believe it when we see it. Either way, we're thrilled to have a new issue of Yeti in our grubby little paws, one of our favorite music magazines for sure. Strangely esoteric but also emminently readable. This time around there are comics, photo essays, fiction, pieces on West Coast art and spiritual collage, anonymous crime scene reporting in African American Los Angeles in the 1940's, writer Eileen Myles, musicians Henry Flynt, CC Hennix and the "Electric Harpsichord", psych folk outfit Timesbold, an animated history of spaz rockers the Apes, a conversation between William S. Burroughs and Alan Greenberg, aQ faves Goldcard interviewing the Blues Goblins and vice versa, Devendra Banhart as well as interviews with with Neko Case, Schneider TM, marine / con-artist Sebastian Matthew Branno and Naomi Yang of Damon And Naomi. Whew! As always, there is a companion cd full of rare and unreleased tracks from Iron And Wine, Jolie Holland, Devendra Banhart, Fruit Bats, Colin Meloy of the Decemberists, the Apes, Henry Flynt, Timesbold, Steffen Basho-Junghans, Postal Service, Blues Goblins, the Mad Scene, Ian Nagoski, Washington Phillips and a bunch more. Here's hoping we don't have to wait years and years for the next issue!
Whereas SF gadabout John Dwyer has been maintaining a solemn hush these days with his project OCS/OhSeeS, he might've been missing a vehicle to vent some steam since the demise of his band Coachwhips. Not anymore! Enter his new-ish band Yikes, and their first release. Secrets To Superflipping is a cathartic raucous guitar bash'n'howl recorded live at KPFA. Mixed and mastered by Weasel Walter and the band.
Yikes, indeed! If you enjoy effects heavy, fuzzed out, fucked up, rudimentary rawk freakshows, this new Yikes is for you! John Dwyer and co. launch a boil-popping noise barrage that barely leaves any room for the squawked and shouted vocals. If you've been keeping tabs on Dwyer's sonic activities, you might be please to discover that his latest exclamation fits right between his old bands Coachwhips and Pink And Brown. Tho' we can also say that on songs like "The Wick" he sounds like a dyspeptic Robert Pollard. The assault is short if not sweet; the seven songs clock in at just under fifteen minutes!
Soooo worth the (nearly three year) wait! Yes, this new album from the ever-evolving Yo La Tengo can be simply described with two words: positively dreamy. With grace and ease, Ira, Georgia and James transport you to their lovely otherworld. Choosing gentle transitions over abrupt changes, with each release they've moved farther and farther from their feedback-laced, decidedly more cacaphonous early years. Which has brought them to this, their tenth album! Always bringing a little something from their previous release to their next, they've brought the pretty organ drones and sequenced beats from their last full-length 'I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One', and drawn them out over the course of a full album. Both Ira and Georgia's voices blend seamlessly into the music and into each other. In fact, it's not until track 9 that Ira pulls out his guitar for a little upbeat number reminiscent of "Sugarcube" or "From A Motel 6". With 'And Then Nothing...' Yo La Tengo have successfully created an album that moves forward, but still blankets you in a warm fuzzy familiarity.
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SORRY.
A song from Yo La's forthcoming new full-length, the album version plus three remixes by Tortosie, U-Ziq, and Kevin Shields, respectively! Each remiz sounds much like typical work by the remixer. Yo La Tengo goes breakbeat? Well, trying.
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The second Yo La Tengo remix ep. True to the excellence we've come to expect from him, Japanese knobtwiddler Nobukazu Takemura delivers the best track (just as he did for the Steve Reich remix album) on this little slip of an EP, wherein Kit Clayton, Q-Unique, and Takemura remix versions of one song by Yo La Tengo, a quiet, murmur-y instrumental. This will appeal to fans of the mellow, sweet Yo La, if you want feedback and such, look elsewhere.
We're actually glad Yo La Tengo isn't more prolific and makes us wait a few years before each release. This way we eagerly anticipate each new album and fully savor it once it's finally here. There's always a give and take of expectation too, we know inside and out what YLT's basic sonic template will be, but there's always a loose thematic exploration or vague organizing principle behind each release that gets changed up each time. The last two, Popular Songs, and I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass, were largely kitchen sink affairs in terms of style and duration, mixing cool genre pop experiments of Motown soul and country with long excursions into indie psych rock. Fade by contrast is their most compact and concise full length in over a decade with just 10 songs in about 45 minutes (the deluxe vinyl comes with a bonus 7" with two covers of a Todd Rundgren song and a Times New Viking song, as well as a download coupon that also includes a bonus new 11 minute track, the ambient instrumental "Oriole"). But the brevity of length on the album proper brings greater focus to the nuanced details of each song. Produced by John McEntire of Tortoise in a wonderful collaboration we are surprised hasn't happened long before now. This may be the band's best sounding record yet.
Whether it's their overall best record is always debatable, but every YLT record satisfies us on some level like a dear old friend, and all of us of course have our own favorites. Fade hearkens back to the softer pastoral sensitivity of 2003's Summer Sun without so much of that album's cosmic free jazz flourishes. Instead, each track on Fade is a tightly composed slice of indie pop economy with attentive detail to arrangement and production: The warm warble of the organ, the brilliant reverbed guitar tones, the subtle chamber orchestration of horns and strings that are peppered about, but used with restraint, and of course the sublime vocal harmonies. Definitely a great morning record to get your day started. Not a game changer by any means, but in the band's 30 year history, who's really expecting one at this point. At least they remain firmly on top of their game, and that's all that matters.
Two discs packed full of Yo La Tengo's genius and love. A wonderful collection of their assorted odds and ends, covers, alternate versions, singles and stuff.
The leadoff track from Yo La Tengo's latest album, Popular Songs, gets the remix treatment from three of the band's favorite hip-hop beat makers. De La Soul, RJD2, and Pete Rock all take their turn remixing "Here To Fall". While we usually aren't the biggest fans of rock bands going the remix route, especially the HIP HOP remix route, luckily Yo La Tengo have always managed to pull of whatever they wanted to do, no matter how unlikely, or seemingly ill advised, and this is yet another example, with all the remixers totally and reverentially respecting YLT's aesthetic while making something new and fresh out of an already great song. De La Soul and RJD2 give more of a break beat groove to the song not adding any of their own vocals which we appreciate, while the Pete Rock remix is for sure the most up front hip-hop one of the bunch. We also know how much these artists mean to Yo La Tengo, as James McNew gushed with excitement about how excited he was to meet Pete Rock, De La Soul and RJD2 the last time he was in town and came to hang out on Irwin's radio show on KUSF. There are few bands you can just blindly trust everything they put out into the world, and YLT are one of them.
It's been a little over 3 years since YLT graced us with their Summer Sun and we have to say we were starting to get a little antsy. We have pretty much worn out all of our copies of their back catalog. Every album, every single. Everyone here can probably boast a different favorite YLT record, but we all knew we needed some new sounds from them pronto. And here we have it, and it does not disappoint. In fact it delights, confuses, and makes us fall in love with them all over again. While the last couple records (which are some of our favorites!) had a pretty consistent feeling and tone (more on the soft and somber side of things) this is a YLT record that truly connects with all their various sides and shades, moods and sounds. Bookended with two long rockers clocking in at around 11 minutes each, the 12 songs in between touch on all the different sounds Yo La Tengo have explored over the years. From their perfect, super catchy indie rock, to sad and melancholy dreampop to a surprising and irresistible dance number, to some groovy horn section action, and all stops in between. I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass most definitely sounds like a band connecting with every part of their past, present and future. And like plenty of other YLT records, it blossoms and reveals secret after secret on repeated listens. A record that demands you spend time with it, but who needs to be told, one listen and that's all you'll want to do....
Viva La Yo La Tengo!
Back print on vinyl!! Now all heavy duty 180 gram. Here's what we had to say the first time around..
Yo La Tengo put a lot of lovin' into each of their albums and over the years have moved further and further away from the raw electric guitar feedback outbursts of their early songs in favor of warm, pretty organ drone lines -- leaning towards a more overall mellow grooviness. But they've done so without sacrificing any of their ultra catchy pop hooks, and for that we are ever so happy and grateful!
Ahhh, Yo La Tengo! Such a band you gotta love... and such a band who loves ya back! With Ira, Georgia and James you get no fancy stuff, no gimmicks, no high fashion. You simply get Yo La Tengo, and they've endeared themselves to legions around the globe. Their hearts are in the right place whether it be making their own awesome music or in this case playing random musical requests to raise funds for beloved radio station WFMU. Released on the band's own label Egon Records, this 70 minute cd compiles the band's on-air performances of tunes requested by listeners in return for a monetary pledge during the station's annual fundraising marathon from 1996 through 2003. They tackle tunes by X-Ray Spex, Eurythmics, Jonathan Richman, Sun Ra, Brian Eno, Hues Corporation, Billy Joel, The Knack, Beach Boys, Yoko Ono, Bachman Turner Overdrive, T-Rex, Archie Bell, Sonic Youth, Rocket From The Tombs, Iggy Pop, Replacements, Petula Clark, and oh so many more. One thing's for sure -- despite their seeming encyclopedic knowledge of music they'll never cut it as a cover band! The title is not an understatement. Heck, they themselves have used the term "dreadful"! Still, it's YLT, and their valiant attempts, on-the-spot figurin' out, muffed lyrics, and strained singalongs played out with gleeful reckless abandon are nothing short of charming and often downright hilarious. The last panel of the terrific Adrian Tomine drawn comicstrip cover art sez it best, "Well, I guess it's for a good cause..."
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
If Fakebook wasn't enough for you, then here's another long-overdue Yo La Tengo release composed entirely of covers. This time they give the YLT treatment to Sandy Denny, the Kinks, Beach Boys, Queen, and more. Outstanding.
