Review: Yo La Tengo takes matters into his own hands with “This Stupid World”

On their pandemic-era album, the band directly addresses the lonely and confusing circumstances of the world.

Few bands defy description quite like Yo La Tengo, whose three members are approaching their 40th anniversary together. They are as eclectic as they come. Their latest album This Stupid World seems to be one of the most progressive and direct to date.

Yo La Tengo has taken elements of the best bands of the last 70 years, including ones they themselves inspired, and mixed it all with a quirky America pastiche and affinity for artists like Bob Dylan and The Velvet Underground. As likely to cover a Grateful Dead song as they are to perform Sun Ra or the title track from Hannah Barber’s “The Banana Splits”, the secret ingredient to their longevity has always been their free and unpretentious versatility.

While they have always excelled at capturing the frenetic sound of their live performances during recording, this latest recording has a particularly malleable quality. The album was produced entirely by band members Ira Kaplan, Georgia Hubley and James McNew, with much of the material on this album coming from a series of rehearsals that took place throughout the pandemic. Somewhere along the line the decision was taken that these new songs should be recorded the way they were meant to be: live and all together.

It’s hard not to interpret this methodology as the band’s protest against the inevitable isolation we’ve all experienced during quarantine, and that feeling serves the songs of This Stupid World perfectly. Yo La Tengo’s recordings often mention some important message, be it personal, universal, or even pop culture. However, with this album they seem to want to show something more clear: the futility of life.

Several grandiose stylistic gestures or unexpected departures from their many past sounds can be found in “This Stupid World”. This recording captures the trio at their most focused and spontaneous. With only nine songs, they are a meager collection of restrained but pulsating meditations, just the kind that they have always been able to perform without difficulty. The record closes with two prime examples of these long, jammy, pulsating long songs that seem so unique in their sound. The opening song “Sinatra Drive Breakdown” is a hollow and sparse apocalyptic song based around a droning and repetitive bass line. Kaplan’s howling guitar is barely holding on. Bursting at the seams, it portends: “I see what you see, I see more winter / I clearly see how it ends / I see the moon rise when the sun goes down.” The trio are fascinated by time, predicting a kind of inevitable end to humanity as they sing in unison, “Until we all break, until we all break / Until we all break.”

The next track, “Fallout”, reflects a desire to avoid the onslaught of time altogether. This is one of the best moments in the band’s life. It seems like this song could have come straight out of the editing room with one of their favorite 90s records like “Electr-O-Pura”. It’s strangely touching to hear Kaplan, McNew and Hubley play a new song in this style again, but it’s not an exact imitation of their earlier work. They find a renewed sense of wisdom and immediacy in their songs, with Kaplan lamenting the suffering of introspection, singing “I won’t tell you how it’s going to be / I don’t have what you want from me” and “It makes me sick / What I have on my mind / It’s so hard to react adequately / I want to fall out of time. Over the rolling waves of a chugging guitar and a booming, blurry bass line, Kaplan’s vocals sound as always closed and delicately magnificent.

Bassist and multi-instrumentalist McNew takes over vocal duties on the subversive song “Tonight’s Episode”, humming into a jazzy self-confident Q&A phrase, stating “I have my plan” and “Milk cow/I can milk a cow / Mow the lawn / I can mow the lawn / Steal your face / I can steal your face. Likewise, Kaplan plunges into his musings on the Brain Capers enos, hypnotically calling out to the voices of Alice Cooper, Rick Moranis and Ray Davis, which he seems to hear through the storm of fluff in his head. It’s mysterious, full of extremely niche pop culture references, and oddly touching.

The acoustic duo “Aselestine” and “Until It Happens” form the centerpiece of the album. The first is an intimate, quiet break from the rest of the album, supported by a distant pedal steel guitar. The only track on the record sung mostly by Hubley, it’s understated and reassuring, but becomes outstanding on repeat listening. The softness is reminiscent of some of the country-tinged covers on their 2015 album Stuff Like That There. Hubley’s moments behind the microphone have often been the highlights of their catalogue, but “Aselstine” stands out as one of her finest performances.

In contrast, title track “This Stupid World” is a cacophonous example of the band at full blast, complete with wailing, multi-minute feedback pauses and chimes that coalesce into a vicious, slow-burning wall of sound. Tension builds over the song’s seven and a half minutes, and Kaplan ends it with a painful mantra: “This stupid world / It’s killing me / This stupid world / It’s all we have.” For all its serious simplicity, this statement may seem naive, coming from someone else, but given the sincerity and power of the record and the band behind it, it seems like all that’s left to say.

Contact Holden Lay at [email protected]