Yo La Tengo: Summer Sun

The dissonance between the album's title, Summer Sun, and the jacketed bandmembers on its blurred cover photo hints at the melancholy persistent on Yo La Tengo's most recent recording. It's a formula the Hoboken trio perfected with 2001's And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out: numerous downtempto numbers permeated by a sweet, almost self-conscious sadness (hence the cheer-up-champ lyrics on "Season of the Shark") that is occasionally forgotten altogether on a few rollicking tracks (in this case, clustered in the latter half and including the whimsically titled "Georgia Vs. Yo La Tengo" and "Moonrock Mambo").

In an interview for NPR's Morning Edition to promote And Then Nothing..., a reporter asked about the band's follow-up plans. Georgia Hubley* intoned, almost pleadingly, "instrumental record." She proved prescient, and within a year YLT self-released Sounds of the Sounds of Silence, the soundtrack to a all-underwater sea-life documentary. The soundtrack seemed to exorcise their guitar demons (alternating droning and squealing guitarwork characterized the band in the1980s and 90s). The band's 2002 Billboard Top 10 EP featuring Sun Ra's "Nuclear War" (in mp3), complete with a chorus of cursing schoolchildren, also relieved some pent-up angst--and was good for a few laughs ("Push that button, your ass got to go. What you gone do, without your ass?") while the rest of the world was talking about, well, nukes and war.

Having thus gratified their experimental urges and held their tongues (or rather, pens) for a while, YLT set out to record Summer Sun. Their interest in avant jazz and improvisation remains vital, however, to what is arguably the bands most lyric-driven record. To lay down the album, YLT and long-time producer Roger Moutenot were joined by more than a half-dozen artists (including members of the Jazz improve collective Other Dimensions in Music) who added horns, strings, flute, and upright bass to YLT's standard guitars-organs-drums lineup on several tracks. Ironically, considering the recording took place in Nashville, the pedal steel appears only once--the closer "Take Care," a Big Star cover. What might be considered the album's musical opus, "Let's Be Still," shines thanks to trumpeter Roy Campbell Jr., who evokes Miles and Chet with clear tone and languid phrasing.

photo © Matthew Salacuse.