Named after Mets player Elio Chacon’s tale of 1962 language barrier disaster. Ira Kaplan is a huge, we’re talking batshit crizazy, Mets fan. Yo La Tengo is Spanish for “I’ve got it”. You can see where the confusion might lie. ‘Yo’ are Singer/songwriter/guitarist Ira Kaplan and his best friend and life partner girl drummer/singer Georgia Hubley and bassist/keyboardist James McNew. Strangely, although they are settled in Jersey (Hoboken) and McNew sports thick black glasses, Yo La Tengo is not Emo.
Kaplan - best known for his stirring role as Friedman in the 1978 Paula Abdul dancing vehicle “Junior High School” - is a Sarah Lawrence graduate (a finishing school for well-to-do young ladies) and Georgia Hubley is the daughter of late Disney animator John Hubley. This seems in line with the album’s gentle Laurie “I’m A Mess” Berkner vibe. I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass is an ironic title. Yo La Tengo is very much afraid of you and wouldn’t think of beating your ass as they girlishly bring it like Smoosh and throw it down, er, gently set it down like Uncle Tupelo.
It’s good, even if it is Reading-The-Paper-Quietly-Over-Brunch-Rock. Or Nu-jazz. A quick look around the Yo La Tengo’s site revealed a class of second graders (that had listened to “Little Eyes” from Summer Sun as a school lesson) shared some of my thoughts. In their twenty year history the band has never outgrown their high school band practice sound. Yet at the same time it still sounds young and fresh – look how they enlisted the trumpet players (senior’s!) for “Mr. Tough”.
I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass exhibits Yo’s longtime love of genre jumping. From the dirty hippie of “The Race Is On Again” and “The Room Got Heavy” (man.) To the sad strings of “Black Flowers” and the Hubley sung “I Feel Like Going Home”. “I Should Have Known Better” and “Point And Shoot” are upbeat throwbacks to mid-nineties alt-pop that double as throwbacks to 60’s pop. The highlight of IANAOYAIWBYA is “Sometimes I Don’t Get You”. The title pretty much says it, and the lyrics say the rest (as if they needed to) “Sometimes I don’t know you/Messes with my head/Sometimes I don’t know how to be on my own/Sometimes I won’t answer the door or talk on the phone/Sometimes I don’t get you/It’s like I’m lost at sea/ But then you say you’re okay/And I know that you’ll stay with me”.
“The Story Of Yo La Tango” showcase Yo La Tengo in all their three-piece instrumental glory, as does “Beanbag Chair”. But who has beanbag chairs anymore? The whole album seems to take place in a sleepy suburban den (or family room I think they’re called…) – in the early seventies. Before things are what they are now. |