"I have no intention of explaining things more fully," says Yo La Tengo guitarist/singer Ira Kaplan.
The remark is parenthetical, dropped into the middle of a discussion about the intentional misspelling in the title of the song "The Story of Yo La Tango," which closes out his band's 2006 release I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass. While the quote may sound unfriendly, it's not. He just makes it clear that he's not interested in tossing out an easy-to-access answer key to Yo La Tengo's music.
And why should he?
The band — Kaplan, drummer/singer Georgia Hubley and bassist James McNew — has thrived for more than two decades by keeping things a bit obscure, from its Spanish-language name ("I have it") to bizarre album and song titles the members steadfastly refuse to clarify. Musically too, Yo La Tengo keeps listeners on their toes, willfully leapfrogging from avant-noise freak-outs to gorgeous mumbling balladry to expansive funk grooves. From album to album, track to track — hell, from minute to minute, Yo La Tengo surprises.
When I first caught the group live, in the fall of 2000, that instinct for surprise was in full effect. The trio had stopped in Carrboro, N.C., to promote its masterfully quiet and understated disc And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out. To start things off, Yo La Tengo strolled onstage and went straight into "Night Falls on Hoboken," a 17-minute droning lullaby. My friend was horrified (although he later came around).
Part of what draws you in to Yo La Tengo is that, while it never shies away from challenging or even annoying its audience, the band also sings gorgeous, down-to-earth love songs. A track like "The Crying of Lot G" sounds like a love letter from Kaplan to his wife Hubley. Rather than bathe Hubley in the airy fantasies you often hear in pop music, though, Kaplan couches the song in the amorphous back-and-forth of a mundane mood dispute.
For a band that disdains connecting the dots for the listener, has it been odd to perform such sincere material?
"There have been a couple of songs along the way that maybe there was some apprehension about performing before we tried, but one of the things I think our group is good at is, and this may not be a compliment, but really just shutting out the audience and just performing for ourselves and to ourselves," Kaplan says. Although the group does take requests, which Kaplan admits is part showmanship, "We spend so much of the time oblivious to what the audience wants that I think it's a nice counterbalance."
That odd mixture of cool distance and heart-on-sleeve revelation surely helps explain how the band has racked up a sizable and obsessive following since the duo of Kaplan and Hubley first began the band back in 1984. Based in Hoboken, N.J., Yo La Tengo went through a variety of members in its early years, recording a series of promising indie LPs.
McNew became a permanent fixture in the early '90s, with his first credited recording coming on 1992's May I Sing with Me. The following year's Painful found the group coalescing by expanding, incorporating the flat-drone elements that would become a staple of its sound.
But it was with the 1997 release of I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One that Yo La Tengo really hit its stride. The album was simply one of the most astonishing records of the decade — indie or otherwise — and perfectly encapsulated the Yo La Tengo ethos. The sound bounced from the garage-thrash gem "Sugarcube" to the keyboard-dominated love lament "Autumn Sweater" to the mellow folk-pop of "My Little Corner of the World." And did I mention the bossa nova tune? Or the low-key crickets-as-instruments ambience of "Green Arrow?" And how about the shoegaze-style cover of the Beach Boys' "Little Honda?"
When the band followed up that masterstroke with the somber whisper of And Then Nothing, and then followed that up with the even more settled Summer Sun, fans not catching them live would be forgiven for thinking that Yo La Tengo had abandoned its guitar assaults for good.
Did the assumption bother the group?
"I don't think anyone wants to be pegged, period, so in a sense there's a 'yes' there," Kaplan says, "but you know, our shows remained all over the place, even when we were highlighting songs from the last couple records."
I caught the band again on tour in the fall of 2003 and was struck by the disconnect between the group's quiet-is-the-new-loud LPs and the thunderous live attack it was still capable of. Someone — the band? — had posted a sheet near the door of the Ybor City venue requesting the audience to keep quiet so the mellower tunes wouldn't be lost. Not surprisingly, Kaplan and company started off the show with an ear-bleeding wash of feedback.
Even though the trio clearly hadn't left the noise behind, it was still a shock when the group's label Matador posted a preview mp3 from I Am Not Afraid on its website in early '06. The track was titled "Pass the Hatchet, I Think I'm Goodkind" and was about as bracing and exciting a song as you can imagine.
Nearly 11 minutes long, "Hatchet" rides a glorious bass strut and funky percussion to indie rock Valhalla, cresting with Kaplan's surging guitar. Lyrics are almost superfluous.
I Am Not Afraid delivered on that track's promise too; The disc is by far the band's most energetic and fun in a decade.
Still, not everything comes together; not everything makes sense. Like that misspelled song title, "The Story of Yo La Tango." Is it a joke?
"I would say there's a particular non-joke to that song," Kaplan says. "Let's just leave it at that."
This article appears in Jan 31 – Feb 6, 2007.