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Rating: This is the story (true or not, it's up to you to decide) of a secret. Now, it is universally recognized that secrets are made to be kept, but today is your lucky day, and I want the truth to enlighten you too. Forgive me if I skip the four shameful words about the other story (the true one, I suppose you are already well informed) of Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley (plus James McNew). Perhaps something will come out, be patient.
"In everything, my friend, the end is important," said the samurai proverb, and I believed it from the start. The end of that pirated disc was the beginning of the story that I tell you, and "Psychedelic sound of Peppino" was the disc in question, loaned by a friend.
"Night falls on hoboken" started slowly, soft echoes in the distance, light reverbs, and gentle percussion that immediately seemed to come from some remote island. Damn it - I thought - I'm wandering to the other side of the world. And indeed, the effect was this; but as the song progressed (here the voice enters, sweet and inhuman, kindly stepping aside for a bass wandering through catacombs), my journey continued, and the world grew ever smaller before my eyes. Now the percussion fades away, the voice disappears and does not reappear, it’s flying too; the guitar liquefies, spins around, then returns and so where has it been? Here are sounds you can't distinguish, and your mind gathers the courage and attempts to follow them to understand. The mind can’t have a moment’s rest or everything slips away and disappears. I made it. I always made it. 17 minutes and 47 seconds later, everything faded, and I thought: I must have this album: I know the truth. Yo La Tengo are aliens. Aliens who came to earth to play their music, and no one ever discovered it. I will become rich and famous.
When "And then nothing turned…" made its first appearance in my stereo, the impact was notable: "Everyday" laid a carpet of perfect reverb and melancholy for my nights, like a swing in perpetual motion under a forever serene sky. The rest was not as perfect but defended itself quite well, except for a "You can have it all," a cheeky and silly cover of a mid-'70s disco hit; to balance the mistake, the subsequent "Tears in your eyes" will intervene, a poetic prayer for fragile souls ("though you don't believe it, I know you are strong; remember: sooner or later darkness becomes light"). Like Velvet Underground dipped in My Bloody Valentine blood; acidic Jesus and Mary Chains running through Leonard Cohen's veins; like Lambchop passing LSD to Mazzy Star. Very beautiful, but it could not be enough for me. Nothing could be enough anymore.
Nothing, in short, that made me think of aliens. "I must have more, more, damn it." Then came "I hear the heart beating as one," and it was even worse. "Where are they, where are they, damn it?" I was the mad scientist of my paranoia. Looking back, nothing came to my relief and, in fact, the opposite, since the only significant change in my life was my bank account.
Years have passed, and the conviction that aliens kidnapped Ira Kaplan and his wife during the sessions of "Night falls on hoboken" has not yet abandoned me and indeed becomes stronger, as the voices within my neighborhood speaking of a boy strolling through the sky, arms outstretched, on the clearest and serene nights and of a music softly emerging from my little room become stronger.
"In everything, my friend, the end is important." Alas, if there were not, an end.
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