Yo La Tengo
is an American indie rock band formed in Hoboken, New Jersey in 1984. Since 1992, the lineup has consisted of Ira Kaplan (guitars, vocals), Georgia Hubley (drums, vocals), and James McNew (bass, vocals).
Despite achieving limited mainstream success, Yo La Tengo has been called "the quintessential critics' band" and maintain a strong cult following. [1] Additionally, the band is renowned for its encyclopedic repertoire of cover songs both in live performance and on record.
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History
Formation and early history: 1984–1985
Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley, a husband/wife duo, formed the band in 1984. They chose the name "Yo La Tengo" (
Spanish for "I've got it!") in an effort to avoid any connotations in English. The name came from a
baseball anecdote. During the 1962 season,
New York Mets center fielder
Richie Ashburn and
Venezuelan
shortstop Elio Chacón found themselves colliding in the outfield. When Ashburn went for a catch, he would scream, "I got it! I got it!" only to run into Chacón, who spoke only Spanish. Ashburn learned to yell, "¡Yo la tengo! ¡Yo la tengo!" instead. In a later game, Ashburn happily saw Chacón backing off. He relaxed, positioned himself to catch the ball, and was instead run over by left fielder
Frank Thomas, who understood no Spanish and had missed a team meeting that proposed using the words "¡Yo la tengo! as a way to avoid outfield collisions.
[2] After getting up, Thomas asked Ashburn, "What the heck is a Yellow Tango?".
[3]
They placed an advertisement to recruit other musicians who shared their love for bands such as
The Soft Boys,
Mission of Burma, and
Arthur Lee's
Love.
[1] The group's debut recording was a
7" single entitled "The River of Water" backed with a cover of Arthur Lee's "A House Is Not a Motel" released in late
1985 with
Dave Schramm on lead guitar and
Dave Rick on bass. After recording "Private Doberman" for inclusion on a Coyote Records compilation entitled
Luxury Condos Coming to Your Neighborhood
, Rick left the band and was replaced by Mike Lewis, the founding bass player of Boston garage-punk bands
DMZ and
Lyres, who was also a member of Brooklyn
garage rock band
The A-Bones throughout his tenure.
Early releases: 1986–1989
In 1986, Yo La Tengo released their first LP,
Ride the Tiger
on Coyote Records. Produced by former
Mission of Burma bassist
Clint Conley who also took over bass duties on three songs, the album "marked Yo La Tengo as a band with real potential" according to reviewer Mark Deming.
[5] Kaplan was credited as "naive guitar" on the sleeve, and in the liner notes for the
1993 reissue of the album on
City Slang Records, went so far as to say "Dave's guitar playing is inarguably the best thing about the record."
Schramm and Lewis left the band after the album's release, with Kaplan subsequently taking on the role of lead guitar and Stephan Wichnewski joining to play bass. The group's next album
New Wave Hot Dogs
(1987) sold poorly, but in the words of Mark Deming, "was a quantum leap over the sound of their debut."
[6]
The release of
President Yo La Tengo
in
1989 did much to establish the band's reputation among rock critics including
Robert Christgau who praised the "mysterioso guitar hook" in the first song.
[7] Produced by Gene Holder of
The dB's, the album was the band's last release on Coyote. Despite the positive reception of the album, sales were still poor and Wichnewski left the band not long after. Hubley and Kaplan carried on as a duo and began playing two-electric-guitar shows. Kaplan, though typically a pragmatist, started carrying a bug trapped in amber in his pocket for luck.
Bar/None and Alias Records: 1990–1992
Yo La Tengo reunited with Dave Schramm in
1990 to record
Fakebook
, an album of mostly
acoustic tunes, including
covers of
Cat Stevens,
Gene Clark,
The Kinks,
Daniel Johnston, among others, with five original songs by the band themselves. Again produced by Gene Holder, the album's
folk sound was a change of pace for the band. Years later, Kaplan recalled that the album was "just me and Georgia looking for an excuse to record with Dave Schramm and Al Greller" who played guitar and
double bass on the album, respectively.
[8]
In
1991, with Dave Schramm in tow, Yo La Tengo collaborated with
Daniel Johnston on the song "Speeding Motorcycle" which was released as a single. The band also released a 7" single on
Bar/None Records with the song "Walking Away from You" backed with a cover of
Beat Happening's "Cast a Shadow." Gene Holder produced the single and played the bass. The
That Is Yo La Tengo
EP released later that year included some tracks that would end up on the group's next LP.
After the release of ''That Is Yo La Tengo'', James McNew began playing bass with the band, forming the trio that continues to make up the band today. According to McNew,
The band recorded
May I Sing with Me
in
Boston with Holder producing and
Lou Giordano engineering.
[10] The album was released on
Alias Records in 1992. Two of the album's eleven songs ("Swing for Life" and "Five-Cornered Drone") were carried over from the
That Is Yo La Tengo
EP and feature Holder on bass. The
Upside-Down
EP was released on
CD in support of the album, rounding out the band's releases on Alias.
Early Matador period: 1993–2000
In 1993, Yo La Tengo began their partnership with
Matador Records, releasing a 7" and CD5 of the song "Shaker" which the band recorded with John Siket in New Jersey. The following LP, 1993's
Painful
was also the beginning of the band's fruitful creative partnership with producer Roger Moutenot, who has produced all of their subsequent albums.
Painful
is the first Yo La Tengo to feature James McNew on every song; Rob Sheffield, writing for
Rolling Stone
remarked that McNew "became an essential part of the sound on
Painful
, the 1993 album that kept every promise Yo La Tengo ever made and blew their previous highlights away."
[11] Critical reaction was quite positive, with reviewer Stephen Thomas Erlewine calling it "a subtly addicting album."
[12] Robert Christgau also praised the group once again, writing in his review that Yo La Tengo is "always friendly. This is not the forbidding experimentation of an aspiring vanguard. This is the fooling around of folks who like to go out on Saturday night and make some noise--and then go home humming it."
[7] The band released
Electr-O-Pura
in 1995 to similar acclaim. For the first time, all songs were credited to the band as a whole rather than individual members; this became the norm for all future releases.
The band's 1997 LP ''I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One'' synthesized the group's eclectic combination of folk, punk rock, shoegazing, long instrumental noise-jams, and electronic music into a sprawling, multi-faceted style. Critical reaction was extremely positive; Pitchfork Media awarded the album a 9.7 out of 10 and reviewer Stephen Thomas Erlewine wrote that it was "arguably Yo La Tengo's finest and most coherent album to date."
[14] [15] Kaplan recalled a turning point in the band's musical progression:
With their critical reputation higher than ever before, the band toured extensively and their fan base continued to grow. In 1998, they collaborated with
Jad Fair and released the album
Strange but True
to mixed reviews. The band entered the studio again in late 1999 to record their ninth LP.
And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out
was released in February
2000 to a warm reception.
Continued acclaim and soundtrack work: 2001–present
In
2001, Yo La Tengo recorded an instrumental score for eight short undersea documentaries by
Jean Painlevé, entitled
The Sounds of the Sounds of Science
. The program debuted at the
San Francisco Film Festival and has been performed live approximately twelve times. The band also released an EP with covers of
Sun Ra's "Nuclear War" in late
2002.
The band's tenth LP, ''Summer Sun'', was released in 2003. Although the album received generally favorable reviews, some critics found the album's quiet atmosphere "underwhelming."
[17] Others criticized the band for a perceived lack of invention.
[18] When asked about the album's quiet nature, Kaplan stated,
Yo La Tengo collaborated with
Yoko Ono on the 2003 charity album
Wig in a Box: Songs from and Inspired by Hedwig and the Angry Inch
in support of the
Harvey Milk High School. The band put together their first "best of" compilation entitled
Prisoners of Love: A Smattering of Scintillating Senescent Songs: 1985–2003
which was released in 2005. They composed scores for four more films: 2005's
Junebug
and
Game 6
, and 2006's
Shortbus
and
Old Joy
. Their scores for these four films were collected on the
2008 compilation
They Shoot, We Score
.
Their eleventh LP,
I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass
, was released in
2006 to universal acclaim.
[20] Informed by their soundtrack work, the arrangements included more strings and horns than any of the band's previous albums. Kaplan told an interviewer: "I think we gained an element of comfort with using that kind of instrumentation, and it became something we could draw on for our other songs."
[21] In addition, the album was book-ended with two guitar jams lasting over ten minutes each.
In 2006, the band released
Yo La Tengo Is Murdering the Classics
, a compilation of their live impromptu cover-song performances on the New Jersey freeform radio station,
WFMU. As part of the station's annual fundraising marathon, listeners who call in to pledge money to the station may request a favorite which the band will then perform on the spot. In late 2007, the band began performing acoustically for "The Freewheelin' Yo La Tengo" tour. Audiences were encouraged to request songs and ask questions which, Kaplan stated, the band tried to answer "in a strategic manner so that the answers to the questions will lead to the next song."
[8]
In March 2008, Yo La Tengo performed under the alias "Condo Fucks" at Brooklyn's Magnetic Field.
[23] As Condo Fucks, the band released an album of cover songs,
Fuckbook
, on Matador in March, 2009.
[24] On June 4, Matador announced a new Yo La Tengo album called
Popular Songs
, which will be released on
8 September 2009.
[25] Yo La Tengo is also contributing to a tribute album for New Zealand rock and roll musician Chris Knox who suffered a stroke in June 2009. All proceeds from the album will go towards Knox's recovery.
[26]
Discography
Studio albums
- Ride the Tiger
(1986)
- New Wave Hot Dogs
(1987)
- President Yo La Tengo
(1989)
- Fakebook
(1990)
- May I Sing with Me
(1992)
- Painful
(1993)
- Electr-O-Pura
(1995)
- I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One
(1997)
- And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out
(2000); US #138
- Summer Sun
(2003); US #115
- I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass
(2006); US #66
- Popular Songs
(2009)
References
- http://allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:fifoxqr5ldfe~T1
- Kaplan's Korner, Episode 1
- ''Richie Ashburn Remembered'' by Fran Zimniuch, Sports Publishing LLC, 2005; pp. 41–42.
- http://allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:fifoxqr5ldfe~T1
- http://allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:3pfuxqq5ld0e
- http://allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:dpfuxqq5ld0e
- http://www.robertchristgau.com/get_artist.php?id=1702&name=Yo+La+Tengo
- http://drownedinsound.com/in_depth/4137093-popular-condo-meltdown--catching-up-with-yo-la-tengo
- Matador Annotated Discography
- http://www.matadorrecords.com/yo_la_tengo/annotated.html
- http://www.rollingstone.com/artists/yolatengo/biography
- http://allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:jjfexqlgld0e
- http://www.robertchristgau.com/get_artist.php?id=1702&name=Yo+La+Tengo
- http://web.archive.org/web/20080214070901/www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/record_review/23364-i-can-h
- http://allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:3vfuxq9hldje
- http://drownedinsound.com/in_depth/4137093-popular-condo-meltdown--catching-up-with-yo-la-tengo
- http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2003-09-19/music_roundupb17.html
- http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/8864-summer-sun/
- http://jimdero.com/News2003/June6YoLaTengo.htm
- http://www.metacritic.com/music/artists/yolatengo/iamnotafraidofyouandiwillbeatyourass
- http://www.ithacatimesartsblog.com/interview-with-gregg-gillis-of-girl-talk/interview-with-ira-kapla
- http://drownedinsound.com/in_depth/4137093-popular-condo-meltdown--catching-up-with-yo-la-tengo
- http://www.brooklynvegan.com/archives/2008/03/the_abones_cond.html
- http://www.matadorrecords.com/store/index.php?catalog_id=343
- http://pitchfork.com/news/35521-yo-la-tengo-announce-new-album/
- http://www.exclaim.ca/articles/generalarticlesynopsfullart.aspx?csid1=134&csid2=844&fid1=39969 July