2008 Woodie Awards
22 years later, band is bravely touring behind new music
Evelyn McDonnell / McClatchy Newspapers
Issue date: 2/5/07 Section: Entertainment
- Page 1 of 1
In the 22 years since Hoboken, N.J.'s favorite erudite guitar band released its first album, a generation of listeners has been conceived and come of voting age. The compact disc has risen and fallen, Bush father and son have been elected presidents, and the Pixies have broken up and re-formed.
Meanwhile, guitarist Ira Kaplan, drummer Georgia Hubley (his wife) and, since `92, bassist James McNew have played a mock Velvet Underground in I Shot Andy Warhol, recorded "The Simpsons" theme song, become the scorers of choice for the coolest of indie films, and continually set new standards for the sort of serenely intelligent and evocative musicianship that college radio programmers and middle-aged men with voluminous record collections eat up.
Yo La Tengo is touring behind I Am not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass, an album whose styles range from soft psychedelia to jazz-rock to soul to garage and which is the latest in a long line of critically acclaimed albums. Critics tend to love YLT, in part because Kaplan is himself a onetime rock writer and one of those guys with an encyclopedic knowledge of music. He says an unknown number of records sprawl throughout his and Hubley's abode: "I stopped counting."
The trio is famous for its eclectic covers, from New Zealand noise band the Dead C to Sun Ra to K.C. and the Sunshine Band (You Can Have It All on 2000's And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out). On "Mr. Tough," a tune from "I Am Not Afraid," they revisit that Southern soul sound, only this time, they burrow in, Kaplan and McNew singing in falsettos.
"With You Can Have It All, we clearly changed it around to make it closer to the thing we've done in the past," Kaplan says. "On this record, for instance on Watch Out for Me Ronnie, there's a guitar figure that while we were in the studio, we thought about Roy Wood. And then we added baritone sax and cello to make it sound more like Roy Wood, instead of less. To me these are all sort of like acts of confidence that we feel like things will be our own if we do them."
Obviously, YLT has matured in two decades. For instance, when the non-Latin band named themselves after an exclamation that caused a famous 1962 miscommunication between New York Mets outfielders (Kaplan is obsessive about baseball the way he is about music), they didn't think that some day they would be playing in Spain, or that people might mistake them for a rock "en espanol" band. They mock their own naivete (and poor Spanish) on the new CD's last track, "The Story of Yo La Tango."
"I think it was part of how insular we were, we never thought about that aspect," Kaplan says. "I think we're less insular in those respects. We're probably just as insular in others. I think that's one of the characteristics of this band, for good or bad: We're capable of shutting out everything we want to shut out."
Meanwhile, guitarist Ira Kaplan, drummer Georgia Hubley (his wife) and, since `92, bassist James McNew have played a mock Velvet Underground in I Shot Andy Warhol, recorded "The Simpsons" theme song, become the scorers of choice for the coolest of indie films, and continually set new standards for the sort of serenely intelligent and evocative musicianship that college radio programmers and middle-aged men with voluminous record collections eat up.
Yo La Tengo is touring behind I Am not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass, an album whose styles range from soft psychedelia to jazz-rock to soul to garage and which is the latest in a long line of critically acclaimed albums. Critics tend to love YLT, in part because Kaplan is himself a onetime rock writer and one of those guys with an encyclopedic knowledge of music. He says an unknown number of records sprawl throughout his and Hubley's abode: "I stopped counting."
The trio is famous for its eclectic covers, from New Zealand noise band the Dead C to Sun Ra to K.C. and the Sunshine Band (You Can Have It All on 2000's And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out). On "Mr. Tough," a tune from "I Am Not Afraid," they revisit that Southern soul sound, only this time, they burrow in, Kaplan and McNew singing in falsettos.
"With You Can Have It All, we clearly changed it around to make it closer to the thing we've done in the past," Kaplan says. "On this record, for instance on Watch Out for Me Ronnie, there's a guitar figure that while we were in the studio, we thought about Roy Wood. And then we added baritone sax and cello to make it sound more like Roy Wood, instead of less. To me these are all sort of like acts of confidence that we feel like things will be our own if we do them."
Obviously, YLT has matured in two decades. For instance, when the non-Latin band named themselves after an exclamation that caused a famous 1962 miscommunication between New York Mets outfielders (Kaplan is obsessive about baseball the way he is about music), they didn't think that some day they would be playing in Spain, or that people might mistake them for a rock "en espanol" band. They mock their own naivete (and poor Spanish) on the new CD's last track, "The Story of Yo La Tango."
"I think it was part of how insular we were, we never thought about that aspect," Kaplan says. "I think we're less insular in those respects. We're probably just as insular in others. I think that's one of the characteristics of this band, for good or bad: We're capable of shutting out everything we want to shut out."
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