Yo La Tengo- Stuff Like That (2015)

Yo La Tengo- Stuff Like That (2015)

“Love isn't something you find. Love is something that finds you.”

Loretta Young

By: Ghost Writer

It was 20 years ago tonight, Sargent Pepper taught the band to play…Nah, but it also was 20 years ago, when I was about to graduate from college and when I found about the internet, I made some of my first connections with people in the U.S., and one if the first thing I wanted to know was if they knew about the Velvet Underground, since I was 15, the VU became a big obsession for me, I even get in touch with people in Texas who were close to VU guitarist Sterling Morrison, who was a teacher there and a big scuba diving fan in Corpus Christi bay, near México, also one of the first names that came in this incursions into the early net was "if you like VU, you ought to listen to Yo La Tengo", but what the fuck was Yo La Tengo? Later I knew they were a band whose main musical inspiration came from bands that I loved, the Velvets and Love, and the Beach Boys, some of my favorite bands from a long, long time, they even performed as the Velvets on the controversial movie I Shot Andy Warhol, I guess that before being a great rock band, Yo La Tengo were great music fans, and that shows in several of their records and that precisely the case with Stuff Like That There, a record that seems to function as their very particular celebration of their third decade making music.

And as big music lovers, Stuff Like That There includes some great originals, always interesting covers and some new versions of old YLT songs, for this album the band retreats again to the third VU record, an almost quiet and placid record full of jangle guitars, My Heart's Not In It is incredibly intimate featuring languid guitars and with a sound too nostalgic not to notice and impossible to escape from it without a little scratch on the heart, and that is precisely the magic of this band, as they go straight to the heart without second thoughts, Rickety is an intriguing original (reminding me also of the early Vaselines) keeping the mystery and the obscure ambience of that third VU record where the distortion of the furious White Light / White Heat was completely gone forever.

I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry is a heart squeezing cover of the great country legend Hank Williams, with guitars barely touched and a languid guitar line that barely illuminates the room, again the band aiming for the sensitive side, just before going through two remakes of their own, the beautiful and more upbeat All Your Secrets and the almost epic The Ballad of Red Buckets.

The almost country version of The Cure's Friday I'm In Love is a total winner although some spark of the original is a little missed, but Automatic Doom, an original from Special Pillow is another great cover taken to new heights here by the band, who again cover themselves on the great Deeper into Movies with its intriguing vocals and placid but precise riffing.

Somebody's in Love is a great way to close this chapter from a band who has made an amazing career with lots of ups and some downs being more a band of music lovers than a band of wild innovators, Yo La Tengo has managed to make something many of us aim to, but few of us can, make a career out of something you really love.