Yo La Tengo
And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out
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Yo La Tengo
And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out
Matador, 2000
RiYL: Velvet Underground, Low, Galaxie 500, Sonic Youth |
Yo La Tengo -- drummer/singer Georgia Hubley, guitarist/organist/singer Ira Kaplan, and bassist/singer James McNew -- are the indie rock equivalent of a No. 1 starter. You count on them to end your slumps, give the team eight solid innings when the bullpen is exhausted, and to go out there and get you that all-important first-game playoff win. Naturally, a No. 1 starter has a full repertoire of pitches with which to surprise the hitter.
On Electr-O-Pura and especially I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One, Yo La Tengo were No. 1 starters. As McNew emerged as the third contributor the band had been looking for since Dave Schramm left in 1986, Yo La Tengo moved into a new period in its career, a time of supreme confidence and seemingly endless possibilities. Firing on all cylinders, the band tackled everything from bossa nova, dream-pop, pedal steel country, sampledelic freak-rock, White Light/White Heat-ish guitar clang, and Anita Bryant covers.
Their proverbial curveball was popping, and they were really helping the Matador ballteam while the egotistical superstars (Pavement), flashy speed demons (Jon Spencer Blues Explosion) and Japanese imports (Guitar Wolf) performed erratically. Now, with the loss of Silkworm, Guided By Voices and Liz Phair to free agency, Matador skipper Chris Lombardi needs Yo La to go out there and have a 20-win season now more than ever.
And damned if Yo La Tengo haven't lost their fastball. And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out is a very pretty, measured album of slow, organ-supported mood crawls. And nothing else. There are no rock songs, no folksy indulgences, no Burt Bacharach samples, and no My Bloody Valentine-style whammy-guitar workouts.
It's not bad at all. Kaplan's "Our Way To Fall," a how-'bout-those-times-gone-by mumble that sounds imported straight from New Wave Hot Dogs, is touching, McNew and Kaplan's exchange of "ba da bas" on the Hubley-led "You Can Have It All" are catchy, and the bizarrely titled "Let's Save Tony Orlando's House" would have been one of the better songs on Heart.
The problem is, none of these songs are tracks from Heart, or 'Pura, or Painful. They're songs from And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out, and the drum machine clinks and six-minute, two-note basslines pile up here faster than a (pre-surgery) Kerry Wood heater. Closer "Night Falls On Hoboken," a 17-minute clunker of an epic, pales in comparison even to the last record's "Spec Bebop," which at least had some feedback to liven things up. The entire record is composed of (the slow) "Big Day Coming" reworkings, with nary a "Sugarcube" or "Tom Courtenay" to liven things up.
Yo La Tengo seem to be aiming here for the focused, linear single-statement album that they've never really attempted before (with the partial exception of the brilliantly hung-up Painful). And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out is an attempt at large-scale, slow-burn spookiness that bands like Giant Sand and Lambchop do much, much better. Yo La lacks a dramatic figure to tie a collection of songs like this together, their strength has always been in their shiftiness, their restlessness, and, as music fans themselves, the clear joy in trying on every hat they ever wanted to wear as young aficionados of rock music.
On past albums, Hubley's wispy voice worked perfectly against guitar wash, but less frequently as the actual focus of a song. She's given the bulk of the singing duties here, but seems to be more interested in working on her infuriatingly unvarying drum patterns. Her husband Kaplan, a Lou Reed with all of the pretensions removed, gives the album its only hint of charisma on "Our Way To Fall" and then skulks off , leaving keys taped down on the band's Ace Tone new-wave organ as he re-alphabetizes his record collection.
McNew, who with his side project Dump has revealed a gift for pop simplicity that neither of the band's founding members seems to possess, appears along for the ride here, even though his "Stockholm Syndrome" was one of the most widely hailed highlights of the last record.
Yo La Tengo have always toed the line between cohesion and chaos. Their only real career failure, the album May I Sing With Me, showed them with clearly no idea where to go and sweating it. And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out has no such problems. The band is as confident as it's ever been, perhaps more so -- it takes a lot of guts to release an album this one-sided after three previous albums teeming with diversity.
Absorbed into the breadth of Yo La's massive discography, And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out adds several excellent slow burns that are as good or better as anything that's come before. But when the album is listened to all at once, the true fan can't help but be a little wistful that they're only hearing one side of a great band.
MARK T.R. DONOHUE | Mark T.R. Donohue is a prolific freelance writer whose areas of expertise include Rockies baseball, video games, genre television, English soccer, and pub rock. He lives in Colorado, where he cultivates the largest and creepiest private collection of Alyson Hannigan memorabilia in the Mountain West.