Being Yo La Tengo in 2009 must be a small challenge; a band that has spent over 20 years launching itself into the indie rock firmament no longer has much left to prove, but as with other members of their cohort (Sonic Youth and Flaming Lips most notably) they have spent the past decade-plus trying to prove their relevance not only to a fanbase privy to their discography but also to a new generation of ears trained to consistently search for some new sound. Yo La Tengo is legitimately Old School by now, and have been for a while–so much so that one could call Popular Songs their first fully successful release since And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out, which came out nine whole years ago. A whole decade of new and old noise has fallen in and out of favor and here Yo La Tengo is, plugging away with their old values of enthusiasm and songcraft.
All of which isn’t to say that Yo La Tengo doesn’t have new tricks up its sleeve; it’s just that those new tricks come from older places, and sound fully integrated into the band’s repertoire due to their tenure as professional musical experimenters. This is not a band that has ever felt the need to shy away from a new challenge or genre exercise. So while it’s valid to point out the vaguely electronic-pop pulse of a song like “By Two’s,” it’s also prudent to note that it could easily slide onto And Then Nothing’s tracklist and feel just as organic there. With each genre experiment, though, the band aims its sights a bit further beyond the landscape of indie rock only to fall someplace very near their own backyard. Album opener “Here To Fall” starts with some ambient squall that shifts to a nearly late-period Stax-ish roll before settling instead for “Planet Telex” (they are white, after all). Similarly, “Periodically Triple or Double” aims to get funky but ultimately sounds like Spoon’s version of funky.
No one is going to look to a Yo La Tengo record for great singing, of course, but Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley’s vocals are too often detrimental to the possible greatness of a few tracks. Like true 90s indie vets, Kaplan and Hubley employ detached vocals for every track here–even on those that seem to demand vivacity. “Nothing To Hide” gets into a great garage-rock stomp (with a hand-clapping girl group bridge to boot) but is let down by its seemingly bored singers; in a better world, Kelly Clarkson would cover this and get massive radio success. “If It’s True” rips off the string section from “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)” but thanks to their thin voices, the duet sounds much more like an old Belle & Sebastian tune than a Motown nugget, which is alternately highly disappointing and somehow charming in a low-key manner.
The generally lackadaisical singing is problematic but, in a roundabout way, highlights a certain lyrical theme that runs throughout Popular Songs. Hubley is the main culprit in non-enunciation, and while “Avalon or Someone Very Similar” sounds like a very pretty–if somewhat bland–piece of cooing wistfulness, it only serves to make a distinguishable lyric like “Times have changed for me and times have changed for you/Looking back on all that we once knew” that much more effective. There’s a proud weariness to a line like this, a sense of hard-won struggle that was mapped out in “Here To Fall” and is echoed later by “All Your Secrets,” where Kaplan stops mush-mouthing long enough for us to hear “If we can’t stop the restless night/We won’t give up without a fight/Before the riot.” And they’ve earned that sense of pride–which also seems mixed with awe–as a band that has weathered all sorts of changes in mood, taste, and climate in regards to indie rock specifically, and the music business as a whole.
It is at the back-end where the record, perhaps a little too late, gets its game-changer. If there is one true flaw on this record of very fine individual songs with sometimes surprising charms (the Byrdsian jangle of “When It’s Dark,” for example, that then suddenly jacks the melody to “Sloop John B” and integrates it beautifully) is the sequencing. “Here To Fall” starts the album off well, but having two somnolent Hubley pieces back-to-back is a real lurch in momentum when it’s only just started; from then on Yo La Tengo seems to hopscotch with great abandon–it’s fun to listen to, but it also means a lack of cohesion. That is, until the final troika of songs, each more epic in length than the last, which play like a suite and elevate an album that has been hinting at this; at building towards something possibly greater than a mere collection of good songs. The glorious, chugging beauty of “More Stars Than There Are In Heaven” feels like the album’s grand statement, its refrain of “We’ll walk hand in hand” sounding like Popular Songs’s thesis. It is also perfectly titled, what with its endlessly spiraling and slightly desperate melody like a panoramic view of the nighttime sky as you see each new star that emerges. “The Fireside” provides a simple, elemental and crystalline acoustic riff, so achingly beautiful that it should soundtrack a montage of red Texas sunsets and desolate roads and embattled teenagers on Friday Night Lights. The effect is so haunting and meditative that when Kaplan begins his brief singing appearance at 7:16, it is nearly disruptive–like a kindler, gentler version of Sunn O)))’s “Aghartha.” “After The Glitter Is Gone” is a totally unnecessary excuse for Yo La Tengo to show that they can still do guitar skronk with the best of them, and if you can hang with its 16-minute run time it proves to be mindless fun.
At this point in their career, Yo La Tengo are an autumn sweater. They may be serviceable, but they are also comforting and warm, and sometimes may even seem fashionable. But like all good Mets fans from New Jersey, nothing they do anymore can be considered remotely sexy, and perhaps they weren’t even that 10-15 years ago, back at the height of their creativity and cachet. But it seemed more important then, that they were around; a band that was vital in helping to create individual spaces for their own little corner of the world. Whatever indie is now, it is no longer little and takes up a lot more space. And there are better, younger, cooler bands than Yo La Tengo to represent it. But it doesn’t mean they’re going anywhere; they are now a band that represents–and makes music about–marriage and fidelity and growing old together. “Together” meaning Ira and Georgia, meaning them as a band with James McNew, and with the listener as well. It doesn’t mean it won’t be hard, or messy, or sometimes take an eternity (or, say, nine years) before it feels like it’s worth the trouble. If those new sounds start to bore you, they’ll be around. Maybe they’ll even have a mini-career renaissance to offer as well. It just won’t mean as much as it used to.
