On the cheekily titled Popular Songs, the trio from Hoboken,
celebrating 25 years, offers its career’s quilt-like album. All the
pieces and patterns are sewn together into a beautiful, unified piece
of work: spacey jam (the opener “Here to Fall”), twangy pop (“Avalon or
Someone Very Similar”), spooky ballad (“By Two’s”), garage
super-freakout (“Nothing To Hide”) and soulful swagger (“Periodically
Double or Triple”), followed by a classic-sounding R&B duet (“If
it’s True”). And that’s just the first half of this 12-track sequence.
Yo La Tengo does so many different things so well, nothing feels
repetitive—even though, as quilts go, repetition is commonly used.
This article appears in Oct 15-21, 2009.