Yo La Tengo @ Academy 2 08/11/09

There is not many bands that have been knocking about for twenty years, and it’s even more surprising when you consider that Yo La Tengo have never had much mainstream success. Despite releasing over ten albums that have largely achieved critical acclaim they’ve never “broken” the industry. This is possibly why they are still together and why they continue to quietly go about their business, cementing their reputation as one of the founders of US Indie Rock.

The stage backdrop is huge close up photo of some loose clothes buttons and along with the multi coloured spot lights there’s a real ambient closeness to the atmosphere inside the sold out Academy 2.



The first part of the set is decidedly chilled out. They open with ‘Decora’ from 1995’s ‘Electr-o-pura’ album before airing numbers from their latest critically acclaimed album “Popular Songs”. What is striking is the quality of the sound. Ira Kaplans keyboard sounds blissful and the vocal, although whispered by drummer Georgia Hubely, is spookily comforting. What becomes apparent from the off is that Yo La Tengo are a band of massive breadth. Within the first twenty minutes all three members have taken lead vocals and musically they’ve switched seamlessly between Hammond organ slumber rock into psychedelic guitar freak outs. Bassist James McNew pauses momentarily to switch on a drum loop and reverses it, while Hubely moves from the drums to the piano at the side of the stage A chill goes down the neck of the audience as they play ‘Don’t Have To Be So Sad’. It’s absolutely beautiful.



Perhaps their range of musical influence is too large to be fully examined in just under two hours and perhaps the acoustic mini-set included half way through was a slight dip in the pace of the evenings entertainment. One thing is for certain though, Yo La Tengo know how to close out a great gig. Swapping acoustic guitars for electrics they finally find top gear and blast out a final frenzy of ‘Sugarcube’ and ‘Tom Courtney’ which are as close to three minute indie pop song perfection as you can get, in particular ‘Tom Courtney’, which is fifteen years old, still has the ring of ‘instant classic’ about it. They conclude the show with the jaw dropping fifteen minute wig out of “Pass The Hatchet, I Think I’m Goodkind” and I swear to god I almost floated up above my own body like some form of transcendental crowd surfer. It was that good.

Twenty years together and Yo La Tengo so no signs of slowing down. They encore in front of the rapturous masses with a version of Dylan’s ‘I Wanna be Your Lover’ and end on ‘You Can Have it All’ and it honestly feels like we just have.