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

Continuing with their ever-expanding Revisionist History series, Matador Records announce a 25th anniversary reissue of Yo La Tengo’s 1995 album Electr-o-pura. Now in a gatefold sleeve and cut from the original 58-minute master, the new reissue is pressed for the first time on two LPs to ensure the highest quality of audio the album has had on vinyl to date.

On their seventh studio album, Yo La Tengo would further expand on the venturous songwriting established on their previous album Painful with stunning craft and a deepened exploration of contrasting textures, moods and atmospherics. Chock full with moments of pop gold like “Tom Courtenay,”melancholic ballads such as the heartbreaking “Pablo And Andrea,” and sweeping, feedback-laden jams like the show-stopping “Blue Line Swinger”, Electr-o-pura is a thrilling document of one of America’s most beloved bands hitting their creative stride and remains one of the most sublime records the band has released in their uninterrupted 36-year career.

TRACK LISTING

Decora
Flying Lesson (Hot Chicken #1)
The Hour Grows Late
Tom Courtenay
False Ending
Pablo And Andrea
Paul Is Dead
False Alarm
The Ballad Of Red Buckets
Don't Say A Word (Hot Chicken #2)
(Straight Down To The) Bitter End
My Heart's Reflection
Attack On Love
Blue Line Swinger

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. Until the next one comes out, of course!!

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

‘Fade’ is the most direct, personal and cohesive album of Yo La Tengo’s career. Recorded with John McEntire at Soma Studios in Chicago, it recalls the sonic innovation and lush cohesion of career high points like 1997’s ‘I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One’ and 2000’s ‘…And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out’. ‘Fade’ is a tapestry of fine melody and elegant noise, rhythmic shadow play and shy-eyed orchestral beauty, songfulness and experimentation.

‘Fade’ attains a lyrical universality and hard-won sense of grandeur that’s rare even for this band. It weaves themes of aging, personal tragedy and emotional bonds into a fully-realized whole that recalls career-defining statements like ‘Blood On The Tracks’, ‘I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight’ or Al Green’s ‘Call Me’.

“Nothing ever stays the same / Nothing’s explained”, the band sing in unison on the reflective opening track ‘Ohm’. “We try not to lose our hearts / Not to lose our minds” - a straightforward sentiment for a band that prefer private intimation to forceful expression, making the song’s resistance to resignation feel that much more earned.

This is the first time Yo La Tengo have collaborated with producer John McEntire, best known for his work in post-rock band Tortoise as well as his work with such artists as Bright Eyes, Stereolab and Teenage Fanclub. He has helped the band hone a set of songs as multifaceted as they are seamless, flowing from the low key shimmy of ‘Well You Better’ to the muted motorik kick of ‘Stupid Things’, to the cozy distortion of ‘Paddle Forward’ and right through to the cagey groove, horns and strings of the gorgeous album closer, ‘Before We Run’, in which the band’s Georgia Hubley and Ira Kaplan sing “Take me to your distant lonely place / Take me out beyond mistrust.”

‘Fade’s emotional core sits at its very centre with two songs, one sung by Kaplan and one by Hubley. The tender, raw, Kaplan-sung ballad ‘I’ll Be Around’ pivots around a circular guitar figure set against James McNew’s calm, pulsating bassline. The song’s simplicity and starkness stand like a beacon against the emptiness.

‘Cornelia And Jane’ features Hubley gently singing “I hear them whispering, they analyse, but nobody knows what’s lost in your eyes / Sending the message that doesn’t get to you, how can we care for you?”, supported by whispering cushions of horns and delicate vocal harmonies. The effect is both heartbreaking and reassuring.

“In the best possible sense, Yo La Tengocan feel less like a band and more like a beloved national trust” - Stereogum

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: Modern-day Velvets do it again.

‘I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass’ is the eleventh full-length album by Hobokonbased alternative indie band Yo La Tengo, originally released on September 12, 2006. It is their sixth album released on Matador.

The title of the album is rumoured to be a (paraphrased) quote by NBA player Tim Thomas. Sitting on the bench together during a game, Thomas was caught on tape by the MSG Network in a profane exchange with another player: “Everyone in this organization is afraid of you, but I’m not, and I will beat your ass.”

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.