Yo La Tengo
Electr-O-Pura

THE REVIEW

Let's go to 1995, to the seventh effort of our YLT, after the excellent works of May I Sing With Me and Painful. The album, a solid Indie Rock/Noise Pop, often overshadowed by critics, is entirely traversed and dominated by Kaplan's guitar reverberations, his counterpoints and dissonances, sometimes granite, sometimes hypnotic, sometimes dreamlike. Hubley's fragile soprano gains more and more space, and rightly so. Kaplan also enjoys playing the organ with percussive linearity. McNew is always well-mannered on bass. On drums, Hubley is a guarantee, impulsive and measured, as and when needed.

Perhaps a bit disjointed, but not yet blurred, the LP does not lack excellent episodes, starting with Tom Courtenay, a pop with Beatles-like evocation, with regard to the English beat of the sixties. The melody is so accomplished that Dante would say "ti fia chiavata in mezzo de la testa con maggior chiovi che d'altrui sermone." The final jam, Blue Line Swinger, well explicates the noise aspect of the band, inspired by "Gioventù Sonica," and goes on to replicate I Heard You Looking (from "Painful," an astounding instrumental, "da paura" indeed), adding Hubley's admirable singing, in a magnificent and long progression vaguely kraut, but reaching its peak. False Alarm is a dissonant, edgy spoken track, full of sobs and clamor, with boogie-like cadences. Flying Lesson proceeds between Velvet Underground and Joy Division, paying homage to both while concealing them. The nocturnal, rarefied, and expansive The Hour Grows Late is bequeathed both to Dream pop and Gospel (at least as a concept).

A minor album of YLT, but of great craft, complex in its textures, never predictable in its outcomes: among many citations, or rather references, the continuation of an absolutely personal discourse.