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Rating: We are no more than twenty people in the audience of the new Estragon when Julie's Haircut starts, whose presence was only known a few days before the concert, but who cares, they care little too anyway... there are seven of them on stage, maybe it’s hard to see the utility; especially concerning the third guitarist and the second keyboardist (Yo La Tengo, by contrast, will be three on stage and will be more than enough), Julie's Haircut immediately make it clear how essential they are for the psychedelically enveloping atmosphere that the evening intends to create, successfully doing so; and live you immediately notice one thing: they are much more '70s than they appear on the records; apart from some avoidable excessive tendency towards the now obsolete dynamic whips that Mogwai and company made a stylistic trait almost ten years ago, our demonstrate a knowledgeable and very charming ability to mix formal references of the psychedelia that was with a cross-over attitude (but very much tending towards a homogeneous construction of their own poetics) typically post-modern.
The whole thing is actually well represented by a cover of Can that Julie's proposes towards the end of the set, which does not seem at all out of focus compared to their own proposals; and so our local heroes flow fast and convincing, and indeed I really couldn't tell you how long they played in total... 45 minutes? an hour? who knows.
Then, shortly after, they get on stage: James McNew is even fatter than I expected, and he is also clearly very shy; Georgia Hublay is terribly tender, she looks like a lady from another time, Ira Kaplan is simply a total madman; what is surprising from the very beginning is that both McNew and especially Kaplan know how to play everything, and play it well: already in the first song McNew indeed disguises himself as a jazz drummer, while Kaplan engages with the heavily-effected organ blabbering about some "motherfucker"... then, after a parenthesis with McNew on vocals, already by the third piece the roles return to normal, with McNew on bass and Kaplan wreaking havoc on a poor and very old Fender Jazzmaster, demonstrating a mastery in guitar playing that is expressed especially in his stunning ability to control sound, dynamics, atmospheres, always perfectly balanced depending on whether he is singing or not, indulging in shocking piercing noise solos flailing shamanistically as only a rocker from the '60s could have done, or coloring the right and visionary riffs of now immortal pieces.
Between delays, loop stations, tremolos, and wah, psychedelia, guys, pure and simple and magnificent... then a calmer interlude, with songs from the latest albums including previews of the upcoming release in September, and then once again psychedelic noise, with the best example remaining the beautiful "Mushroom Cloud of Hiss" from the beautiful "May I Sing With Me"... in the encores, after Hubley ventures into singing in a piece accompanied only by (double) drums, even a cover of "Tell Me When It's Over", yes, precisely that one by Dream Syndicate, before the finale, perhaps the best possible, of "Our Way To Fall"... needless to say eclectic, Yo La Tengo are Yo La Tengo: that is, a band from another time, in the sense of being unpredictable and exciting, passionate and captivating, in one word: beautiful.
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