From Black to Blue: Yo La Tengo’s And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out Turns 25
How the Hoboken trio solemnly kicked off the 21st century
The biggest revelation to me in 25 years of loving Yo La Tengo’s ninth(!) album is why did I always think there was an ellipsis in the title like it’s …Baby One More Time or something?
For such a shy-scale band, the big tell was in these increasingly unwieldy album titles. Painful, sure. May I Sing With Me, fine, whatever. I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One, incredible album, we’ll give the subject-verb agreement a pass. And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out, look, they still haven’t shaken off the ’90s yet. Give a monkey a brain and he’ll swear he’s the center of the universe.
By the time they got to I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass, three middle-aged Hoboken bohemians were at an all-time swagger peak with ten-minute-plus openers, horn sections, the works. They packed an entire Pitchfork Festival set in 2006 with nothing but material from that record before it was even out, and it killed, but they were also challenging the tread on their tires after the critical indifference to the previous Summer Sun. Or maybe they were sneering at the cognoscenti who snubbed it. Or maybe they were just doing whatever they wanted. But overall, I think you could analyze the growth of their ambitions and assertiveness by the growth of their album titles.
Anyone who finally broke after their fifth or sixth album — your Goo Goo Dolls or Flaming Lips — will tell you they’re a lot more fuck-it than bands who reached their desired level of success pretty early on. I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One, the closest thing Yo La Tengo ever had to a cultural moment unless you count that Onion article, was number eight. They were doing whatever they wanted. A quarter century and many great albums later that thankfully hasn’t changed. And despite the length of that title, they indulged themselves following up their most successful album by showing off how light their touch is.
VIDEO: Yo La Tengo perform “You Can Have It All” on Late Night with Conan O’Brien
As with other mood-setters by this band (“Ohm,” “Decora”), “Everyday” is one of their absolute finest moments. The most haunted Yo La Tengo song, it’s hushed and ominous with James McNew’s alternating ascending and descending bassline downright sinister. There are no drums to anchor what feels like a six-minute fall, just cymbal crashes accelerating with your heartbeat while Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley chant in midnight-black harmony like a seance. A truly stunning opener that sounds like nothing else on the record, especially as the album soon reveals its warmth and gentility on the love-themed “Our Way to Fall” with brushes. “Saturday” is as stark and spare and electronic as anything on Kid A, if it was conceived by Low that is. It augments the choruses with stuttering drum machine and mistaken piano plunks, simulating getting lost midsong while sustaining a masterfully controlled environment.
What this album really establishes is that even when Yo La Tengo is all mood, they’re still writing incredible songs at the bottom of the textural swell: “Let’s Save Tony Orlando’s House” indeed turns the modest funk of “Autumn Sweater” inside-out, and “Tears Are in Your Eyes” made a fan of Lucinda Williams for good reason; it should be an Americana-lite standard. Then there’s the increased confidence towards executing R&B on “Madeline” or “The Crying of Lot G,” which is so muted it might take 25 years to even notice it’s doowop. The 18-minute closer “Night Falls on Hoboken” should be talked about more; it never once feels overwrought or out of step; this is a band you can trust with your precious time. There are two outliers and the trio made them count: blistering rocker “Cherry Chapstick” and the bouncing, ba-ba-ba-strewn cover of George McCrae’s proto-disco “You Can Have It All” with a gorgeous Georgia falsetto at the helm.
Both of those tunes are among the most cherished moments on Inside-Out, which might explain why the follow-up’s follow-up Summer Sun is regarded with such bad faith, because it has no secret rockers, no “Sugarcube” or “Cherry Chapstick” to offset the prettiness overload. I think it’s the perfect complement to Inside-Out, the bright lazy morning album after a deep and romantic late night, and that funky excursions like “Moonrock Mambo” and “Georgia vs. Yo La Tengo” more than fill the missing disco cover slot, and I love Summer Sun even more. But maybe two extremely delicate albums in a row that often flirted with cocktail music was a bridge too far for devotees of Ira’s corrosive guitar-wringing. They’re very much of a piece, though, and I highly recommend enjoying them back to back — they can truly hear the heart beating as one. In fact, you’re a lot more likely to have a really good day if you throw a whole bunch of Yo La Tengo albums from their ambitious-titles era in the changer. Don’t sleep on this one, though it’s wonderful to sleep to.
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