The most live-sounding Yo La Tengo album in years. Times have changed for Yo La Tengo as much as they have for everyone else. In the past, the band has often worked with outside producers and mixers. In their latest effort, the first full-length in five years, This Stupid World was created all by themselves. And their time-tested judgment is both sturdy enough to keep things to the band’s high standards, and nimble enough to make things new. At the base of nearly every track is the trio playing all at once, giving everything a right-now feel. There’s an immediacy to the music, as if the distance between the first pass and the final product has become more direct.

Available on standard black vinyl, CD and on limited blue vinyl.

STAFF COMMENTS

Martin says: Yo La Tengo's newest outing takes all of their famous melodicism and folky melancholy and refines it perfectly into a distillation of everything that's made the band so great over the years. Brittle in parts, but retaining the intensity of their more driven excursions and wall of sound art-rock they do so well.

TRACK LISTING

1. Sinatra Drive Breakdown
2. Fallout
3. Tonight’s Episode
4. Aselestine
5. Until It Happens
6. Apology Letter
7. Brain Capers
8. This Stupid World
9. Miles Away

The second instalment of Matador’s 2022 “Revisionist History” Catalog Series, including albums from Pavement, Interpol and Spoon.

“A stone cold classic.” – Rolling Stone.

“The greatest band in the universe.” – Pitchfork.

“I Can Hear The Heart helped teach people how to listen to music.” – Stereogum.

Our review from the original release date:
"Sixty five plus minutes of breath-taking material recorded under smooth circumstances in lovely Nashville, TN. This one will without a doubt appeal to long time Yo La Tengo fans, considering the fact that this is their very best one yet. The really good thing, though, is that a lot of people who will buy this record will do so without knowing that it probably is the only TRULY GREAT record they will buy in their lives."

TRACK LISTING

1. Return To Hot Chicken
2. Moby Octopad
3. Sugarcube
4. Damage
5. Deeper Into Movies
6. Shadows
7. Stockholm Syndrome
8. Autumn Sweater
9. Little Honda
10. Green Arrow
11. One PM Again
12. The Lie And How We Told It
13. Center Of Gravity
14. Spec Bebop
15. We're An American Band
16. My Little Corner Of The World

Yo La Tengo returns with an EP comprised of the new original track “Bleeding” and five covers written by Bob Dylan, Carole King and Gerry Goffin, The Delmore Brothers, and more.

The new album includes original cover artwork by renowned Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara along with an etched illustration by YLT’s own James McNew on the disc’s b-side.

The Matador release follows the debut of Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s Yoshitomo Nara solo exhibition and corresponding catalog, which includes the six new Yo La Tengo tracks along with a B-side of other musicians curated by the artist.

TRACK LISTING

Blues Stay Away From Me
Wasn’t Born To Follow
Roll On Babe
It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry
Bleeding
Smile A Little Smile For Me

There's a riot going on. You don't need me, or Yo La Tengo, to tell you that. These are dark times, in our heads as much as in the streets. It's easy to lose contact with the ground, flying through endless banks of storm clouds day after day. Confusion and anxiety intrude into daily life and cause you to lose your compass. There are times that call for anthems, something to lift you out of your slump and put fire in your feet. And then there are times when what is indicated is a balm, a sound that will wrap around you and work out the knots in your neck.

While there's a riot going on, Yo La Tengo will remind you what it's like to dream. The sound burbles and washes and flows and billows. If records were dedicated to the cardinal elements, this one would be water. There are shimmery hazes, spectral rumbles, a flash of backward masking, ghostly flamingos calling "shoo-bop shoo-bop." You are there. And even if your mind is not unclouded--shaken, misdirected, out of words and out of time--you can still float, ride the waves of an ocean deeper than your worries, above the sound and above the Sound.

For Yo La Tengo this is a slow-motion action painting, and Georgia Hubley, Ira Kaplan, and James McNew did it all themselves, in their rehearsal studio, with no outside engineer (John McEntire later did the mix). They did not rehearse or jam together beforehand; they turned on the recorder and let things coalesce. Songs came together over long stretches, sometimes as much as a year going by between parts. You'd never guess this, since the layers are finessed with such a liquid brush. You'd imagine most of the songs had sprung forth whole, since they will enter your head that way. Within two listens you will be powerless to resist the magnetic draw of "Shades of Blue," will involuntarily hear "She May, She Might" on your internal jukebox first thing in the morning and "Let's Do It Wrong" late at night. While there's a riot going on you will feel capable of bobbing through like a cork.

In 1971, when the nation appeared to be on the brink of violently coming apart, Sly and the Family Stone released There's a Riot Goin’ On, an album of dark, brooding energy. Now, under similar circumstances, Yo La Tengo have issued a record with the same name but with a different force, an album that proposes an alternative to anger and despair. Their first proper full-length since 2013’s Fade, There's a Riot Goin’ On is an expression of freedom and sanity and emotional expansion, a declaration of common humanity as liberating as it is soft-spoken. 

TRACK LISTING

You Are Here
Shades Of Blue
She May, She Might
For You Too
Ashes
Polynesia #1
Dream Dream Away
Shortwave
Above The Sound
Let's Do It Wrong
What Chance Have I Got
Esportes Casual
Forever
Out Of The Pool
Here You Are

Once again moving the bar for 'what can be done in just one record', no two songs sound the same. There's everything from epic soundscapes to jaunty popsongs, to gorgeous love songs with a few rock'n'roll numbers thrown in. All delivered with humour, a smattering of falsetto and a huge dose of that unique Yo La Tengo charm.