Possessed of a catalog as extensive and eclectic as Yo La Tengo’s is, and with the New Jersey trio ever willing to plumb those depths, it’s never certain which form of the band will emerge at any given show. Leading with a wave of distortion and opening on “Big Day Coming,” it quickly became clear YLT came to jam.
“Let’s wake up the neighbors. Let’s turn up our amps, the way that we used to, without a plan,” implored Ira Kaplan on the lead track from 1993’s Painful, crescendoing the song into a calamity of keys.
Sound engineers scrambled to keep up with the band’s switching of instruments and trading vocal mics, but beneath the warm wail of noise, little was lost as the songs melded together into an enveloping whole. “Paddle,” from their most recent Fade, was buried beneath James McNew’s bass, but “Stockholm Syndrome” embraced the blurring soundscape as Kaplan unleashed his guitar.
With McNew setting up on snare alongside drummer Georgia Hubley, “Autumn Sweater” knit the perfect tone for an evening waning into night’s chill, bleeding into Electr-O-Pura’s “Decora.” A galloping percussive roll announced “Ohm,” methodically building speed over nearly 10 minutes as Kaplan and McNew serenaded “So say goodnight to me” into the darkness.
Closing out the epic seven-song set with “Pass the Hatchet, I Think I’m Goodkind,” McNew laid a heavy, hypnotic bassline upon which Kaplan contorted for nearly 20 minutes, hunched over and convulsing against the strings as he improvised through two guitars. By the end, there was nothing left but to drop the guitar on the stage, and walk away.
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This article appears in November 7 • 2014.
