Albums by this artist

I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass (2006)

Summer Sun (2004)

Danelectro EP (2000)

And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out (2000)

I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One (1997)

Electr-O-Pura (1995)

Concerts

November 26, 2000
Bowery Ballroom, New York

Yo La Tengo

Electr-O-Pura

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» PIERO SCARUFFI | STAFF WRITER

Yo La Tengo Electr-O-Pura Matador, 1995 RiYL: Sonic Youth

The splendid, mystical aura of Painful, Yo La Tengo's previous album, also extends its to follow-up, Electr-O-Pura. Articulated from beginning to end by hypnotic guitar reverberations, "Decora" opens the album exquisitely, dancing in tune to Georgia Hubley's low voice. That angelic sound returns every now and then to calm the flood waters, first in the happy-go-lucky pop of "Tom Courtenay" and then in the swampy, ethereal distortion of "The Ballad Of Red Buckets."

But it pushes soon enough toward darker shores, from the dilated gospel of "Hour Grows Late" and the fragile blues of "My Heart's Reflection" to the languid, atmospheric country of "Pablo And Andrea." Elsewhere, ecstatic harmonies are affixed to angular songs, but with no major disruption of a sensible flow. With "Flying Lesson," we find Yo La Tengo singing about the thrill of living, instead of alienation. The low refrain hummed by Ira Kaplan (freely inspired by Joy Division) is backed by hypnotic guitar strums. It's enriched by a parade of collateral sounds and sonic complications, including splinters of dub and twang, but is then crushed by an incandescent crescendo, reminiscent of the Velvet Underground's way with a drone.

In a weird nod to industrial music, "False Alarm" begins with a hiccup of dissonance before proceeding to a rhythmic boogie. The long final jam, "Blue Line Swinger," instigates a downpour of vocal counterpoints and discordance, providing a good blueprint to the Yo La Tengo sound. On Electr-O-Pura, the trio composes songs that are extremely refined and complex, compressed with guitar eccentricites and austere textures, but both melodic and accessible at the same time.

PIERO SCARUFFI | Piero Scaruffi runs the exhaustive music database Scaruffi.com. A native of Italy, he has also been praised for his work on the General Theory of Relativity, formal theories of the mind, and artificial intelligence. And no, we aren't making that up.