by Yo La Tengo
Yo La Tengo return with new album Fade, out now via Matador / Remote Control.
Fade is the most direct, personal and cohesive album of Yo La Tengo’s career. Recorded with John McEntire (Tortoise, Stereolab, Bright Eyes) at Soma Studios in Chicago, it recalls the sonic innovation and lush cohesion of career high points like 1997‘s I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One and 2000’s And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out.
The album is a tapestry of fine melody and elegant noise, rhythmic shadow play and shy-eyed orchestral beauty, songfulness and experimentation. But Fade attains a lyrical universality and hard-won sense of grandeur that’s rare even for this band. It weaves themes of aging, personal tragedy and emotional bonds into a fully-realized whole that recalls career-defining statements like 'Blood on the Tracks', 'I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight', or Al Green’s 'Call Me'. Soft, gentle, persuasive, melancholy, beautiful and triumphant in turns, the effect is both heartbreaking and reassuring.
This is the first time Yo La Tengo has collaborated with producer John McEntire. He has helped the band hone a set of songs as multifaceted as they are seamless - flowing from the low-key shimmy of ‘Well You Better’, to the muted motorik kick of ‘Stupid Things’, to the cozy distortion of ‘Paddle Forward’ and right through to the cagey groove, horns and strings of the gorgeous album closer, ‘Before We Run’.
Yo La Tengo is one of the most beloved and respected bands in America. For nearly thirty years, Ira Kaplan, Georgia Hubley and James McNew have enjoyed success entirely on their own terms – playing the world’s best concert halls, museums, and dives, dominating critics’ lists, doing a Simpsons theme, playing the Velvet Underground in ‘I Shot Andy Warhol’, sharing stages with some of the most important musicians of our time, and even creating a holiday tradition onto themselves with their yearly series of Hanukkah shows at Hoboken, New Jersey’s legendary club Maxwells, from which they’ve donated hundreds of thousands to charity.
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