Description
This Stupid World’ is 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 have often worked without side producers and mixers. In their latest effort, the first full-length in five years, ‘This Stupid World’ was created all by themselves.
For a classic band, Yo La Tengo are a bit hard to pin down. In their ‘90s-early ‘00s heyday, their records were unwieldy fusions of sweetly mellow indie jams, shoegaze, and noisy guitar freakouts, the type of combination which didn’t always result in fully coherent releases but did make them indie darlings and possessors of a passionate fan base. Their best albums are still generally inconsistent, almost always containing a questionable decision or two.
In this case their 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 dy to the music, as if the distance between the first pass and the final product has become more direct.
