Like “Big Day Coming”, the band has released multiple versions of “Tom Courtenay”, one of their most popular songs. This hauntingly beautiful bummer of a song could be a lost country classic exhumed by these noted historians of pop music, but it’s just another Yo La Tengo original aimed to break your heart with Hubley’s pristine voice. It’s significantly better than any twelve-minute song about rock clubs misspelling a band’s name should probably be. With its textures and polyrhythms “Autumn Sweater” sounded like a love song written by Tortoise when it came out in 1997. The series of albums between 1993’s Painful and 2000’s And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out is almost flawless and saw the band grow and challenge itself in surprising ways. Shakers, handclaps and Hubley’s mechanical drumming keep the ship afloat and rhythmically enriched. But we’re talking about one song here, not the whole album, and “Detouring America With Horns,” the first song on the record, didn’t necessarily let the listener know what was in store for them. “More Stars Than There Are in Heaven”, 12. “Pass the Hatchet, I Think I’m Goodkind”, 3. “Let’s Save Tony Orlando’s House” (named after a Simpsons joke) is one of the exceptions. Kaplan and Hubley sing the low-key “The Summer” together, but it’s her voice that sticks with me—a simple, pure, honest voice that makes this acoustic gem one of their most touching songs, even if the lyrics are a bit inscrutable. These aren’t complaints, though, as it’s a classic rocker and a winning stylistic exercise. The band’s first decade saw a constantly shifting line-up around the core of Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley, the guitarist and drummer who share songwriting and singing duties. Unlike “Big Day Coming”, it’s a toss-up as to which one’s better. Electr-O-Pura is my favorite. It’s an ambient delight. Album: Painful (1993) It’s a wordless journey as cathartic as any song with vocals, and has both the loose charm of improvisation and the smartly designed structure of a pop song. Album: I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One (1997) The first song on the record, which fans call the slow “Big Day Coming”, is a long, slow, hypnotic lullaby built around a circular organ melody, Kaplan’s whispered vocals and tasteful guitar feedback. It’s a slice of bubblegum drenched in noise, from Kaplan’s feedback heavy guitars to the thick organ drone that fills in for the bass. Built around an organ, a shaker and two drum kits, “Autumn Sweater” is austere but rhythmically and emotionally rich. I'm happy that Blue Line Swinger and Nowhere Near made the top 10, but I think overall if you include the top 20 you have a pretty balanced list of YLT's best … There was a problem, though: That top 20 is exactly the same as it was in 2014. “Nothing to Hide” is pure bubblegum buried deep beneath guitar fuzz, and one of the most infectious songs the band has ever written. Kaplan and Hubley have a great knack for writing love songs that are tender and poignant but never schmaltzy. Occasionally Kaplan hits a discordant note, or lets out a guitar squeal, or otherwise adds an unexpected bit of emphasis to what he’s playing. Complete your Yo La Tengo collection. Yo La Tengo turned 30 this year and just released a double-sized reissue of their 1993 album Painful. Nope, this isn’t a cover. Yo La Tengo’s second EP in recent months finds them resuming their covers jukebox niche, weaving together selections as unlikely as a 1940s blues oddity and as recognizable as a … These aren’t complaints, though, as it’s a classic rocker and a winning stylistic exercise. Shakers, handclaps and Hubley’s mechanical drumming keep the ship afloat and rhythmically enriched. It’s an immediate sign that they weren’t the same band anymore. Genres: Indie Rock, Indie Pop. Yo La Tengo were already indie rock veterans when Painful first came out. Hubley sings the title almost wordlessly, arcing the melody above a great guitar hook and a stolid bass line, finding tenderness within the noise. “Ohm” is a great example of picking an idea and plowing through it until you’ve exhausted all of its possibilities. It is their 7th album released on Matador and the eighth album to be given Matador's Buy Early Get Now treatment. Earlier this month Matador released Extra Painful, a double-sized edition of Yo La Tengo’s 1993 breakthrough Painful. The subtle electronics of the song build up like a volcano until the roof of it pops off. “Cornelia and Jane” is a showcase for her heart-breaking voice, which is Yo La Tengo’s greatest instrument. The solo on “Pablo and Andrea” is surprisingly straight-forward, and almost has the lilt of a pedal steel. They’re about as likely to play a three-minute pop gem as they are a forlorn folk song, a 10-minute one-note drone, a cover of a classic hit from the ‘70s, or a crazed, 20-minute noise jam. The central lyric, “I wanna see my heart’s reflection in your eyes”, couldn’t be less guarded, but Kaplan visibly squirms when I ask if it is about his love for Hubley. It’s more than just the presence of strings and horns—it’s McNew’s voice, the echo of the drums, that combination of wide-eyed positivity and silent, internal sadness. That’s a sign of a good pop song, and on some days “Damage” would maybe land much higher on this list. List of the best Yo La Tengo songs, ranked by fans like you. It shows up like a sunbeam about two-thirds of the way through another gorgeous, low-key Hubley love song. And yeah, go ahead and listen along, if you’d like; I did while I was writing this. Hubley had sung on Yo La Tengo records before Painful, but “Nowhere Near” was her coming out party. 2009’s “More Stars Than There Are in Heaven” might have the strongest such influence, and more than anything else in the band’s repertoire sounds like something that could be on a My Bloody Valentine album. Georgia Hubley’s voice might be flat but it isn’t affectless. A spiritual successor to Painful’s “Sudden Organ” (you can find that particular chestnut at no. But what makes it great is Hubley’s background vocals. Albums include I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One, And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out, and Painful. It’s not the best song she’s sung, but it’s her best vocal performance. The discography of Yo La Tengo, an indie rock band based in Hoboken, New Jersey, consists of fifteen studio albums, six compilation albums, fifteen extended plays, twenty two singles, two film score albums, four collaborative albums, and one album of cover songs. No other Yo La Tengo song quite sounds like this one, making it a standout on what was already their most musically diverse album. Yo La Tengo kept getting better throughout the 1990s. Released 8 September 2009 on Matador (catalog no. It sounds a bit like the somber, ghostly folk music of Jackson C. Frank, but with some muted organ drones and high bass notes keeping it aloft. It starts with Hubley’s soft voice in “Decora” floating atop a wash of guitar that has enough distortion and tremolo on it to pass for something off Loveless. Record: Shaker single (1993) I hope people in 2014 know who Tortoise are. Album: Fakebook (1990) Fakebook is mostly an album of covers but one of its few originals is also one of the band’s most beloved songs. Album: And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out (2000) “Pass the Hatchet, I Think I’m Goodkind”, 3. Sadly One Direction’s song of the same name isn’t a cover. They don’t have a lot of songs that do both, and the best one in that small subset is this song from Electr-O-Pura. The video for this short pop blurt starred the now-defunct lo-fi faves Times New Viking masquerading as Yo La Tengo, which made perfect sense: At a time when incredibly noisy, incredibly catchy pop songs were making a major comeback among the record collector set, Yo La Tengo whipped up “Nothing to Hide” to remind everybody that they’d perfected this particular type of song decades before. The restraint is remarkable, especially since Kaplan routinely plays guitar like he’s one of those weird air-balloon creatures at a used car sale. Toch is de aanhang van de band langdurig en gestaag groeiend en speelt de band vandaag de … It’s sleek, from Kaplan’s jetstream guitars to the almost spoken harmonies to the basic song structure. Album: I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One (1997) Album: I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass (2006) Stylistically similar to the No. Yo La Tengo - Popular Songs: Amazon.nl Selecteer uw cookievoorkeuren We gebruiken cookies en vergelijkbare tools om uw winkelervaring te verbeteren, onze services aan te bieden, te begrijpen hoe klanten onze services gebruiken zodat we verbeteringen … Album: President Yo La Tengo (1989) And then 2003’s Summer Sun halted that momentum with a listless set of meandering songs. To mark the release of the Jersey trio's 15th album, we dig into their catalog for the best of the best. It starts with a lengthy instrumental intro that isn’t far removed from R.E.M. It might sound weird to commend the restraint of a band that’s partially known for very long jams and almost comical contortions during Kaplan’s unhinged guitar solos, but there’s always been a strong streak of restraint running through the band, and “Our Way to Fall” is a fantastic example of that. One of the album’s better efforts was rescued in an EP later that year and given a rollicking rock ’n’ roll treatment in the vein of “Sugarcube” and the original “Tom Courtenay.” The contrast between Hubley’s voice and the buzz of Kaplan’s guitar somehow makes this song both aching and anthemic at the same time. TheRealYLT. It’s significantly better than any 12-minute song about rock clubs misspelling a band’s name should probably be. “Blue Line Swinger” nearly sums up a 30+ year career in just under 10 minutes, starting off fragile and indecisive before growing into a committed roar, with the band’s full complement of tricks—Hubley’s beautifully flat vocals, a freak-out solo, organ drones, “baa baa baas”—supporting a timeless riff. James McNew’s bass and Georgia Hubley’s drums are admirably patient, settling into a hushed, one-note groove while Ira Kaplan plays a gossamer guitar figure and sings in a near whisper. 1 song on our list, “The Story of Yo La Tango” was released more than a decade later, and over 20 years into the band’s career. They had experimented with noise in the past, but this was the album where they truly started to integrate their folk tendencies with their noise explorations. “Blue Line Swinger” almost sums up a 30 year career in just under 10 minutes, starting off fragile and indecisive before growing into a committed roar, with the band’s full complement of tricks— Hubley’s beautifully flat vocals, a freak-out solo, organ drones, “baa baa baas”— supporting a timeless riff. Album: Popular Songs (2009) 24 below), “False Alarm” is another rhythm-heavy, overdriven organ jam, with Kaplan pounding out the indie-rock equivalent of Cecil Taylor’s nontraditional piano chords over Hubley and McNew’s steady rhythms. This slow-burning epic starts off mellow and grows into a surprisingly powerful (and noisy) tour de force. Album: Painful (1993) Painful is where Yo La Tengo really came into their own, and mid-album track “Sudden Organ” introduced what became a longstanding subgenre of Yo La Tengo songs: heavy freakouts on one of those old ‘60s electric organs that can sound like a thick, impregnable monolith when played properly. The solo on “Pablo and Andrea” is surprisingly straight-forward, and almost has the lilt of a pedal steel. Bookmark Removed. Thus ends another perfect Yo La Tengo album---their third, by the way---and thus ends any objectivity I’ve tried to establish with this review. Music video by Juanes performing La Camisa Negra. It’s catchy in a classical sense, like something Jackson Browne could’ve written, and it has a bit of edge with the drug references, but it never would’ve gotten played on regular rock stations when it came out. Since 1992 the lineup has consisted of Ira Kaplan (guitars, piano, vocals), Georgia Hubley (drums, piano, vocals), and James McNew It’s maybe the earliest of their shoegazery attempts, a good year or so after that fad had died in England, and maybe that’s why it’s a bit chillier than the rest of Painful. And if you’re somehow wondering who these Yo La Tengo cats are in the first place, well, they’re a rock band—a really good rock band. In the original version of this list I wrote that Painful is where their “disparate influences congealed into a fully formed style of the band’s own, from early ‘60s folk and pop to the post-Velvets diaspora of noise and punk,” and that’s still a good summation. She can devastate without overemoting and while barely budging off a note. Stylistically similar to the number one song on our list, “The Story of Yo La Tango” was released more than a decade later, and over twenty years into the band’s career. Album: Electr-O-Pura (1995) Genres: Indie Rock, Noise Pop, Dream Pop. It’s catchy in a classical sense, like something Jackson Browne could’ve written, and it has a bit of edge with the drug references, but it never would’ve gotten played on regular rock stations when it came out. There’s a hint of Suicide’s minimal dread in that organ tone, along with the psychedelic paranoia of Oneida. Popular Songs, an Album by Yo La Tengo. The first few times you hear it you may not even register it as a pop song, but it’s a brilliantly fractured take on the kind of restrained, earnest, fundamentally mature-sounding love song that Yo La Tengo have explored many times. McNew, who has released a few albums of tender four-track pop under the name Dump, first took lead on a Yo La Tengo album with “Stockholm Syndrome.” The concert favorite is a warm and tightly written look at romantic confusion, sung with McNew’s Neil Young-ish high-pitched sigh of a voice. And although they’re rightfully celebrated for their covers, we’re only going to look at songs the band wrote. It’s maybe the earliest of Yo La Tengo’s shoegazery attempts, a good year or so after that fad had died in England, and maybe that’s why it’s a bit chillier than the rest of Painful. Album: President Yo La Tengo (1989) Gossamer webs of sound that pulse around a staccato bassline and muted drums. F ar from content to rest on their laurels as an institution in the world of indie rock, Yo La Tengo continue to challenge themselves on their 12th album, Popular Songs.What makes the album work is the tension between the band’s ongoing embrace of conventional pop song structures and their drive to experiment with novel soundscapes and genre influences. Album: President Yo La Tengo (1989) So here’s what Paste decided to do. It turns the modest aspirations of the lyrics, with the band predicting a big day ahead while taking it slow and playing Rolling Stones covers, into an aching ode to making music for the love of making music. Like their previous work, Yo La Tengo’s current output sounds gentle and hypnotic. Album: Summer Sun (2003) Summer Sun is a bit of a letdown from the great run of albums the band put out throughout the ‘90s, but it has a few highlights. It’s not just the room that got heavy—the multiple organ parts in this song are thick, unrelenting blasts of sound smothering the polyrhythms kicked up by a stripped-down drum set and some hand percussion. Yo La Tengo burst back after 2003’s middling Summer Sun with one of their most powerful jams ever. Kaplan’s guitar eventually gets louder and more erratic, colliding with the rhythm at odd angles and in clusters of notes that sound like they’re collapsing. 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