YO LA TENGO
I Am Not Afraid of You And I Will Beat Your Ass
Matador Records
Yo La Tengo has always been good at naming albums.
May I Sing with Me
,
I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One
and
And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out
drip with indie colors, so it is kind of surprising that the sweet, dreamy, introspective titlers would suddenly come forth with
I Am Not Afraid of You And I Will Beat Your Ass
.
Have they
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gotten fed up with their shoegazing brand of dream pop? Gone metal…or mental?
Thankfully, no.
I Am Not Afraid of You
isn't Yo La Tengo turning its back on the sounds the group has been steadily perfecting since the early '80s. The husband-and-wife duo of Ira Kaplan
and Georgia Hubley have been down every musical road available, with a
rotating cast of bass players that seems to have finally stabilized in the
perfect match of James McNew. With
I Am Not Afraid of You
, they have put together an album with chapter-like songs, bookended by 10-plus-minute rock-outs, that give us all a lesson in the history of indie pop.
"I Should Have Known Better" and "The Weakest Part" spring around their beats with a slightly Beach Boys-esque Velvet-Underground-meets-Pavement vibe. If it's possible to bounce up and down in a pair of Chucks and stare at the floor simultaneously, these are the songs that prove it. Their indie cred drips so heavily from these songs even the endorsement of CNN's Anderson Cooper can't taint it with the mainstream.
There are, of course, the string- and piano-heavy, love-lorn numbers the band is known for. Sweet without being sappy, the scratchy voice of Georgia Hubley is rich with bluesy tones on "I Feel Like Going Home," while lyrics on "Daphine" are replaced with the sound of rain hitting window panes.
Over the years Yo La Tengo has worked its way through so many styles it's unfair to compare this album to any of the previous, more focused works.
I Am Not Afraid of You
is an eclectic sampling of all styles from a band that refuses to decide what they are, and one that is so good at all of them, who'd want to stop them from exploring anyway?
