Yo La Tengo
Popular Songs

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Sound clips for Popular Songs by Yo La Tengo: on CD at Norman Records UK. CD, Matador, OLE8562, £12.49.

What their label says...

‘Popular Songs’ demonstrates that everything said about Yo La Tengo in the past
is still true, only more so.

Yo  La  Tengo  are  Georgia  Hubley,  Ira  Kaplan  and  James
McNew. The band were formed in 1984 and are from Hoboken, New
Jersey, USA.

Now, almost any song can sound  like Yo La Tengo, provided  it’s Yo
La Tengo playing it: The strings-and-keyboards orchestrations of the
opener, ‘Here To Fall’, on which Ira offers the new best articulation
of  what  it  means  to  love;  the  Clean-feeling  pop  of  ‘Avalon  or
Someone  Very  Similar’,  unburdened  by  gravity  or  friction;
Georgia’s  aching  ‘By  Two’,  a  dream-machine  in  motion,  a  warm
shiver for your cold, still nights.  And that’s just the first three tunes!
What of  the garagey  rave-up of  ‘Nothing To Hide’,  the  funky but
unfunklike  ‘Periodically  Double  Or  Triple’,  and  the  classic-pop
duet, ‘If It’s True’?  Which isn’t to even mention the gently ambling
‘I’m  On  My  Way’,  containing  some  of  the  album’s  smartest,
simplest  lyrics,  which  rolls  into  a  duo  of  romantic  wedding-ready
tunes  alternately  fronted  by  Georgia  (‘When  It’s  Dark’)  and  Ira
(‘All  Your  Secrets’).  Then  fans  of  Yo  La  Tengo’s well-established
habit  of  stretching  out  will  be  enthralled  by  the  simmering,  sultry
‘More Stars Than There Are In Heaven’ and the hypnotic ebbing
flow of ‘The Fireside’, these two epics totalling 20+ minutes of the
most beautiful, obsessive Yo La Tengo music ever put to tape.