C or D : Yo La Tengo

Painful has been my favourite of late, esp. Sudden Organ.

i like quite a bit of painful, too, but it seems to me that the more and more they've gone into sonic fuckery, the less and less attention they've paid to the songs. i liked them best when they had that balance.

(And why don't HTML tags work for me fcc - how you doin' 'em?)

"Painful" is wonderful, it's an album that I can hear two or three times in a day without getting tired of it. "Nowhere Near" was in the top 10 on my ballot for the 90's poll.

As others have mentioned, YLT really should keep their albums under 50 minutes or so, although when they go totally bonkers with their eclecticism ("I Can Hear the Heart ...") they can be excused for stretching things out another ten minutes.

However, I sure wish they'd take the mic away from Ira. God, I hate his voice. Sometimes, I don't think he's even trying.

Also the Today is the Day , EP version, is pretty fantastic ..

Electropura is my favorite. All the "rockists" HATED Summer Sun when it came out.

Great taste in covers too. And they named themselves after a Richie Ashburn tall tale, how Classic can you get?

They were pretty awful live.

Some of their songs are good, but I can never really make up my mind about them.

-- Ned Raggett (ne...), November 17th, 2004.

WOW! i'm breaking out in hives of envy right now.

Loving YLT is like loving your disfunctional relationship with your friend/partner/parents/children. Flawed but cherished.

Uh, no it wasn't! Sorry, I really didn't like YLT and they've barely registered with me since, and I absolutely hate Buffalo Tom. This was a bill of suffering through the openers to get to the headliner.

nice summer sun write up alex.

classic or dud album title? (will be out soon).

Their summer concert in NYC last summer was fun.

Does Louis Jagger like Yo La Tengo?

who cares? great band.

Painful, still in my top 10 albums of the '90s. gorgeous, unforgettable album.

OTM! Yes! Painful is all killer, no filler. I mean, "Nowhere Near," "Big Day Coming," and just when you think they couldn't possibly top themselves, they go and throw "I Heard You Looking" at you. Though it is equally as great, I never understood why ICHTHBAO was the indie-rock du jour of the time, while Painful slid by relatively unnoticed.

Does anyone remember their "guitar tech" touring buddy (small skinny dude with bug-eyes and toussled hair - appeared to be perpetually in the throws of a meth binge) who was constantly by their side, running around and either tuning and prepping equipment or holding down organ "drone" keys for them during tours for Painful and Electro-pura?

the last show of theirs i saw (Sept 07), YLT opened with a nearly 30-min. version of "I Heard You Looking" :)

Damn.. that must've been nice. I'm a sucker for epic psychedelic guitar-noize freakouts, especially when performed live and especially ones with a melody/leitmotif as gorgeous as IHYL. I stopped going to their shows sometime around 2000 b/c I thought their records were starting to get a bit blase. Maybe I should start going again..

oh the live shows are still GREAT.

Does anyone remember their "guitar tech" touring buddy (small skinny dude with bug-eyes and toussled hair - appeared to be perpetually in the throws of a meth binge) who was constantly by their side, running around and either tuning and prepping equipment or holding down organ "drone" keys for them during tours for Painful and Electro-pura?

FUCK yes. When I saw them in 1994 I was constantly amazed at what he was doing/how he was doing it/how everything worked so seamlessly. High point of the show: "Out The Window" breakdown --> chaotic loops/drones --> "Sudden Organ." Killed.

Despite putting on three of the most incredible live shows I'd seen, I couldn't bear to see them on the tour following the fiasco that was Summer Sun. A friend of mine (and huge YLT fan) did, and was literally bored to tears.

The "Freewheeling Yo La Tengo" show I went to was pretty boring too. Too much VH1 Storytellers and jibber-jabber, not enough music, and the somewhat acoustic setting makes it hard to hide the fact that none of the three of them have strong singing voices.

(But their two Saturday shows at the GAMH, March 2000, were near the best live shows I've ever seen.)

great acoustic set last night at a benefit. 2 highlights from James, Sun Ra's Nuclear War and Black Flag's Nervous Breakdown.

I put together this little YLT deep cuts mix ... a good listen, I think!

https://aquariumdrunkard.com/2023/05/22/yo-la-tengo-deeper-into-deep-cuts/

Ira throws out the first pitch at a Mets game!

ole pal @noah_s just texted this in from the first base line pic.twitter.com/0DNv21coiy

— joel berk (@pfcidb) June 1, 2023

pretty good!

pretty good pitch too! Ira must have loved that.

(lol xpost)

Matador has tweeted video of Ira's honorary first pitch too.

I need to dig into Tyler's deep cuts mix soon

I just played it, very worthwhile. But not downloadable (didn't they used to be?).

it's just one big mp3 file but if you right click / save as you should be able to download it.

aw yeah "Nutricia" is one of my very faves

that's a song I could just play on a loop forever I think

xp
OK, I got it, thanks. My PC said "save link as" and I thought that would just copy the link, not the file linked to.

been on a big ylt kick, i'm familiar with the core four (painful -> and then nothing) but little outside of it. and then nothing is one of my favorite records of all time so it's been wonderful to discover that they made a few more slow motion nighttime insomniac records just like it (summer sun and there's a riot going on) and i adore them as well!!!

don't sleep on the new one either, fantastic stuff

i'm gonna listen to it today!!! :)

fade and i am not afraid of you... are both very good too

but this stupid world is a top 3 ylt album

hard agree

Their sea creature documentary soundtrack is great too

yes!