Bernell DorroughThey’re from Hoboken, New Jersey, which immediately pegs them as geographically challenged. But twenty years into their career, the Matador Records staples show no sign of abdicating their hard-won seats in the throne room of indie rock royals.
The funny thing is that the Yo La Tengo, otherwise known as Ira Kaplan, Georgia Hubley, and James McNew, look more like high school geography teachers than rock stars. Well, Kaplan and Hubley do. McNew sort of looks like the lovechild of Lou Reed (Velvet Underground) and Wayne Coyne (Flaming Lips), if such a conception could take place. Still, in the image-over-quality world of rock, Yo La Tengo’s “Image? What’s image?” nonchalance is a welcome change that carries over into their live show. The show had a refreshing oddness about it-a planned spontaneity, a familiar uniqueness. They could be so soft as to qualify as minimalists, and three songs later play so loud they border on noise rock. Visually, Yo La Tengo is what happens when smart nerds realize that being smart and nerdy is cool. Audibly, Yo La Tengo is what happens when cool nerds toy with distortion, shake maracas, and do their best to take you and your date straight to Dimension Tengo.
The portal to Dimension T opened last week at the Pageant, which wasn’t crowded but far from empty. Plenty of Washington University students attended, plenty of single, middle-aged men, and plenty of matted indie fans with perfect thift-store fashions. When the action on stage was too mellow (which was not the case during Ira and Georgia’s brilliant choreographed two-step) to warrant undivided attention, the crowd provided an endless source of amusement for anyone interested in the art of looking like a hipster. But the hazy blue lights and wisps of fog onstage wouldn’t let the eye stray long; and the music made sure the ear never did.
Despite requests for older material, which Yo La Tengo played a healthy dose of, McNew announced apologetically that they would have to subject us to newer songs as well. Luckily for us, their newer songs are just as engaging as their older catalog. Continuing with the oxymoronic theme, since no other adjective does justice to their, er, oxymoronic nature, Yo La Tengo songs are only engaging after they’re not boring. That is to say, you could easily not listen to the music because you are too overwhelmed by hearing it. That is to say, the less sense their music seems to make, the more appealing it becomes to the senses.
If none of this makes sense, that’s about half of the point. For example, the classic Yo La Tengo song “Moby Octopod” (off their breakthrough-yes, their breakthrough came fourteen years after they did-1997 album “I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One”) lays down an assaulting groove of a bass line under a kinetic, reeling keyboard chromatics. Which begs to differ from a song like “Our Way to Fall” (from their 2000 release “And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out”) which is a soft, lullaby love song, the kind of song you must, at some point in your life, enjoy during afterglow. Then there’s their recent EP “Nuclear War,” which contains four different versions of the scathingly funny song, complete with a horn section and a chorus of children crying out “Nuclear war! Nuclear war! Motherfucker! Nuclear war!” It’s not that it makes sense, it’s not even that its nonsensical, it’s that it has what so little music, pop or indie, has-sensibility.
Sensibility is appealing. Just ask the producers of the TV shows “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “24,” and “Six Feet Under,” all of which have used Yo La Tengo songs. Yo La Tengo has written original music for a Coca-Cola ad campaign. They have a song called “Let’s Burn Tony Orlando’s House Down” (the chorus is “Watch it burn, watch it burn…”) and they’ve been known to sing Chanukah songs. Of course, I will never understand why a slightly pandering song like “Autumn Sweater” was so well received while a beacon-of-light track like “Stockholm” goes unnoticed, but far be it for me to criticize requests and dedications.
Yo La Tengo’s music must be experienced because it is an experience. It can’t be danced to really, or given any sort of corporeal connotation. It can, however, be set to blue lights and wisps of fog, and it can, in under two hours, make you feel the way you feel after you see a really good art exhibit: better, happier, different, good.