Yo La Tengo is miraculous on several levels.
Their music explores a range vanishingly rare among rock bands, and no matter what they do—from chaotic noise to bathing warmth, from wristflip irreverence to unconditional devotion, from 10-minute drones to two-minute throwaways—it always, always sounds gloriously like them. Their shows (like the ones tonight and tomorrow at the Neptune) are legendary embraces of the seemingly infinite possibilities available to three people with four or five electric instruments between them; the noise freakouts every bit as exhilarating as the hushed, harmonized lullabies sung by (and to) Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley, the married couple that formed the band in 1984.
Just as astonishing is that the band has persevered for 34 years, maintaining not only a high standard of musical excellence, but a steady degree of audience popularity all the while. If you’re old enough to remember a time when indie rock seemed less like a genre and more like a means of abdicating your place in a mainstream music culture that refused to be interesting, well, Yo La Tengo is sort of the dream that came true.
While many of their contemporaries have persevered by way of line-up changes, drastic sound evolutions, and a variety of pas de deux with the nostalgia racket (reissues, VIP “experiences,” cruises), Kaplan, Hubley, and bassist James McNew—who still counts as the “new guy” in band lore because he only joined in 1991—emerges every so often, having never entirely gone away, with a new record and a tour that prove they still look and sound the way they always have, which is to say (if you’ll forgive the use of a word that gets thrown around altogether too often nowadays) perfect. Just how you want them. Pleasing and abrasive. Loud and soft. Wry and sincere. Beautiful and other kinds of beautiful.
During a European tour earlier this month, James McNew spoke to me by phone (the kind of call that would have cost hundreds, even thousands of dollars when he first joined the band, PS) after completing a soundcheck at Club Manufaktur in Schorndorf, a small town in SW Germany, about midway between Munich and Frankfurt. The previous day, they’d been in Switzerland, with previous stops in Ireland, the UK, Holland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Croatia, Serbia, Italy, and stopping next in Paris and Brussels, before heading back to the states to begin their North American tour right here in Seattle.
Despite all the travel, time zones, and technology, McNew was warm and voluble when discussing the band’s longevity, good fortune, and work habits. He became a bit more tight-lipped toward the end when the questions became more intimate, but he was never less than accommodating.
The only user’s note I have is to imagine the sound of light laughter lining his deep speaking voice—that guy sang “Stockholm Syndrome”?—and also to insert about 500 more iterations of “like,” “I mean,” and “you know” in both the Qs and the As.
I haven’t toured in Europe since the Bush II administration, but I was struck then by how many people—particularly in Germany and Belgium—were eager to kind of elect me a representative of the US and make sure I knew how they felt about the president. Does that still go on? Is it a more active tendency during deplorable administrations?
Yeah, definitely. I mean, traveling and doing press during the Bush II administration was not fun. When journalists or just, you know, people at shows would talk to us, they would ask, “What do you think about this George Bush guy?” And now we are way beyond that. I think people are just like, what the fuck is going on?
What have you done?
It’s distinctly more amped up than it was back then. Which seems appropriate.
You don’t have to be an especially outspoken political artist to be sort of held accountable.
Yeah, it’s like you are in some capacity a delegate or diplomat, I guess.
Minister without portfolio.
Precisely. Yeah, that goes without saying. So yeah, it’s fairly fucked, but the people who are coming to see Yo La Tengo, the people who know who we are, I think they already know our feelings on the situation as well so they can at least kinda come to us to commiserate and we, you know, talk each other down off of whatever ledges we are on that day.
A lot has been made of what you’ve called the “accidental” process of making There’s a Riot Going On. You’ve mentioned that installing a new version of Pro Tools was sort of at the heart of it.
Yeah, pretty much.
I know it’s very old news, but there was a time that seems not terribly long ago when a lot of bands were resistant to switching over to Pro Tools, or digital recording in general. But obviously, that has long since stopped being a viable option for most people, and there’s no going back. But now, it’s not just using Pro Tools—it’s that you’ve got to use the newest version. What’s your history with that?
Well, I mean, I would count us totally among those numbers of people who felt that way. But for the last 12-13 years we’ve practiced in the same room in Hoboken, and in one corner of the room, we have a little Pro Tools rig that we’ve recorded the film soundtrack stuff that we’ve done over the years. We’ve done all of it there like in that corner of the room, and recording, I mean, experiments more than anything else. Like, we recorded demos and things that way and in a pinch we could record a cover for some project if we needed to. And along the way, I just sort of got more involved and more into it and interested in learning how to do it. But yeah, we would still work to tape. When we recorded Fade [2013] we worked on Pro Tools but also worked to tape. Stuff Like That There [2015] was almost entirely tape.
We had been working on a film soundtrack at the end of 2016 that we spent a couple of months exclusively not really doing anything else but that. And that was all being done on Pro Tools and we were really enjoying it. It was a really fun, intense project we hit a rhythm of making up music and getting good at recording it and editing. Once we’d fulfilled our obligations to the movie, we just sort of kept moving and because we were enjoying ourselves kind of making up music that way. I mean normally when would write songs, it would be essentially the three of us, you know, sitting at our instruments and jamming and playing, but we just sort of moved to the other corner of the room instead of the part where the drum kit and the amps were, and just sort of did it that way instead. There was a lot that was really similar, I guess, as far as composing—that still doesn’t really feel like the right word, but like, as far as making things up… That feels a little better.
Much better.
But it was sort of like the answer to anything was, “Yeah, let’s try it!” Because, essentially we were just at practice and we weren’t paying for a nice studio with an awesome bathroom and a really comfortable couple of couches. We were just in our practice room. So we weren’t watching the clock, I think there’s a lot of internal and external pressure that comes with being in like a pro studio, and we just by chance got rid of all of that. There was a feeling to just sort of try anything that we thought of, and it was really fun. We didn’t know how to accomplish a lot of the things our imaginations would cook up, but it led us to a lot of new places and a lot of fun mistakes and discoveries and stuff like that. Every day was like really exciting in like a super dull way. It was great.
That seems like the perfect description of recording.
I really liked it, I don’t know if this is like the new way for us to work but it was really cool to know that we could do that. I never thought in a million years that we would record an album by ourselves. That just never seemed ever a possibility, but it’s awesome, to realize that we did it.
What was so liberating about stepping outside the pro studio model? Is it that you weren’t paying for it? Is it that you’re weren’t being presided over by someone whose job it is to make sure it gets done? Is there a legitimacy factor, like that’s what making a record is supposed to be?
I think so, yeah I’m not sure of the right word for it, but there’s like a lot of constructs. You know, you go to the studio with, okay, we’ve got 12 songs that we want to record in a week. So we should have this much done by the end of every day. And also there’s at least one other person. I mean, in our recording situation we worked in complete privacy. it was just the three of us. But in the case of working with John McEntire or Roger Moutenot, there was a fourth person there to sort of help and give opinions or at least offer some kind of guidance. But yeah, that was all gone.
In my (somewhat embarrassingly elaborate) fantasy of your band, the default mode tends to be harmonious and droll and collegial. But does it ever get to be like the Troggs tape? You know, “You are absolutely wrong! We will not go to the bridge until 4 bars later, goddamn it!” or whatever? Does Yo La Tengo get into heavy disagreements that need a moderator—I mean musically not personally, obviously.
Yeah, yeah. I don’t think so. I think we’ve just been working together so long that we just kind of know how to work together and we usually, like, literally do work on everything by committee. And, kind of related to what I said earlier that the answer to every suggestion was “yes, let’s try it,” I think that can be—I mean, you know, not merely because the word “yes” is in the sentence—a really, a positive way to work. You know, to try and see. Try something that, yes, very well might be wrong, but what the hell. If you are going to make a mistake, this is a great great place to make it.
One of the many beautiful things about your band is that you all seem totally invested in the next thing. A lot of bands that stick around for a long time have a way of calcifying, or maybe they just get so used to a way of doing things that a new way might seem threatening. Have you noticed any particular tendencies along those in the bands you’ve known along the way?
I don’t know. The answer might be in this but, like, I don’t really watch other people. I have a professed ignorance of the outside world. That might be an exaggeration. But I feel like the older we get, the more we’ve experienced, so there’s less stuff to be afraid of. And like there’s so much still to be curious about and, you know, interested in growing and kind of getting stronger and getting better and I feel like that’s just a natural part of our personalities. I mean, Ira mentioned the other night when he was putting together the set list for a show that by his count in 2018 we had played well over 200 different songs so far, since this tour began. Which seemed like a lot.
And it’s only May.
Once he mentioned it, it’s like oh, I hadn’t even thought about that. Last night we did three songs that we haven’t played in years. I know tonight we’re doing a song that we haven’t played in forever. I think it’s just part of what we want, and part of the experience is to feel like we could do whatever we wanted to do at a moment’s notice.
I’ve often been curious about the way you put set lists together. Especially when you’re doing two shows a night or a two-night stand like you are doing in Seattle. Obviously certain songs are Yo La Tengo classics. But there’s such a deep bench, for a lack of a better term—
I appreciate deep bench, I totally appreciate deep bench.
I guess Yo La Tengo is little bit like the elephant in the old Indian parable. For every fan who feels like I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One is the definitive album, there’s another who feels exactly the same about Popular Songs or Fakebook or whatever. I’m not asking if you feel like you have to play “Sugarcube” every night. But is there a process for sorting it out every night?
Well, I mean right now, we are on tour supporting a new record so there’ll be… Between the two sets—and the first set tends to be on the quiet side; it’s not an acoustic set, but it’s sort of a quieter side of things, and then the second set will build in volume pretty drastically—but between those two sets there’s let’s see, I think nine or 10 songs from There’s a Riot Going On that we’ll do almost every night. A few of them we have been doing every night. And then there’s a few wild cards that sort of get swapped out now and again. But then as far as everything else, it’s kind of up for grabs. It could just be like you know, there are songs in medium rotation, light rotation, and then there’s just total surprises. But it’s different every single, every single show is different, and always has been. I’m sure it was like that before I showed up and it has been ever since I’ve been here.
I remember when I first started playing bass with Yo La Tengo in 1991 and that was after the Fakebook record had come out. And that record got the band a lot of attention and so there were people coming to see Yo La Tengo who were expecting that and they were not getting it. Because when I first joined we were playing really loud. There might have been some quiet stuff in there but for the most part it was pretty full-on and I remember people registering their… let’s say disappointment with what they were met with when they showed up. That was pretty fun though.
Is that because the band is always on to the next thing, incubating the next batch of songs, or the next record?
I think so, yeah. I mean, geez, the band would have been together like six, seven years at that point. Maybe it just requires being together for 30-odd years for that perspective to finally dawn on everyone—“oh yeah right, they do lots of stuff.” But I think over the years, we finally found a way to integrate everything: different intensities and moods and things like that. I’m sure there’s still something to disappoint someone, but for the most part, for the most part, I feel, actually, a hundred percent great about the way we’re able to represent who we are.
Which is another great thing about having spent 25 years being a great fan of the band: You guys seem to have beat the odds or won the lottery, or choose your cliché. The fact that you’re still fully, not only intact, but every bit as present tense as you’ve always been is a beautiful thing to be behold. I kind of want to assume that that’s true internally as well—not that you guys are necessarily rolling down the highway saying “Isn’t it beautiful to behold our magnificent success” but surely—
You are not gonna this believe but yeah, we totally do that.
See? I like it even more now.
Yeah.
But do you ever have the sense of having kind of won the lottery, personally? As a bass player in like one of about three bands from your milieu that found a way to be viable, beloved, and good all at the same time, for a really long time?
Sometimes. I mean sometimes I think about like—you know if I turn on the news and see that the subway is not running and its like, “Oh boy, that sucks but man, I’m glad that’s not me today.” And I mean, there are parts of days like, let’s say arbitrarily on a European tour, there’s like a couple of seconds every day where I’ve just had it.
Sure.
But it’s very, very easy to snap back to perspective and think like, oh right. It’s like, why don’t you calm down? And then all of a sudden realize the bigger picture is in clear view all the time. I mean, I don’t think we ever really had a destination, like, we’ve got to get to this level of success and then we’ll be happy, and sell this many records or sell this many tickets or whatever. We just never thought about it, and I think we continued to never think about it and kind of only think about what’s next, what’s fun, and I think those are kind of what really drive us.
You mentioned before having an avowed ignorance of the outside world…
That may have been a little grandiose of me.
But surely you’ll have heard that the world of, for lack of a more elegant term, indie rock, has been through a few changes since you joined Yo La Tengo. Do you still have a sense of desire or responsibility to keep up with contemporary music?
I don’t feel like compelled to keep current. I mean there was a time… I was a college DJ, like around 1988, ’89, and at that point I felt like, man, I know all the stuff that’s going on! And then you know, 20 years later I’ve realized, its like, yeah, I never heard of that, and this was going on, and damn, I missed this completely. So no I don’t really… I mean, I feel compelled to listen to the things I like. I listen to WFMU a lot, like almost every day. I listened today, in fact, when I was here in this dressing room. Just kind of waking up and listening live to WFMU and it was great. And listening to that station I hear stuff every single day that I’ve never heard before and I always have to check to see who it is.
There’s nothing better than a great radio station.
I think that that’s the most valuable source of information for anybody who likes music, that station. It goes 24 hours a day and every show is archived and, I mean, if you are the kind of person who likes things, there’s something there for you that will change your life, like right now.
[Personal aside: When I saw Georgia and Ira perform this song opening for Doug Sahm and Augie Meyers at the Backstage in 1994, a night or two before the YLT second stage appearance at Lollapalooza, I knew I had found a band I would love forever. And I did.]
Okay, I’ve saved this for last because it’s either a question you’ve been asked a million times or it’s just uncomfortably personal but I’ve always wondered about it, so here goes: The marriage of Georgia and Ira feels very much like the nucleus of what the band means. And you’re just as essential, but because you joined the band a little later and are a little younger.… The question, I guess, is: What is it like to be in such close proximity to a marriage over so many years? Do you function as… Is it like you’re the bass player/friend/collaborator or is it like, you know, because of how much time in a band is spent not making music, but also because love and devotion are such central themes in the songs, it does seem a bit like a three-person marriage in some ways, but then it obviously isn’t, like, a “throuple,” so I… Is there a string you can pull to finish this sentence for me?
Yeah, keep digging. [laughs] A strong theme in a lot of my answers is “I don’t think about it that much” and that’s a pretty all encompassing answer to that question I think.
Fair!
They are my friends. In a lot of ways they are my closest friends. They are my, you know, my brother and sister. I didn’t have any siblings growing up. I never knew what that was like and I feel like maybe now I know. I mean, we’ve been together through a lot for a long time and I think there’s you know a strong level of communication and openness and to some realistic degree telekinesis and like, you know, non-verbal sympathy towards each other as far as emotions and vibrations and things go. But at the same time, I refuse to examine it. I trust it, and I trust where it’s gone, and I trust where it’s going.
