Yo La Tengo and Built to Spill Dig Deep at the Ryman

Yo La Tengo at the Ryman, 7/11/2025
Photo: Victor J. Reed

The co-headlining tour is a strange animal. It can be a win for the performers, the promoters and the venue, since each artist might draw a bigger crowd than they typically do in the market, and the rising tide will theoretically lift all boats. It can be a major win for the fans too, even if the Venn diagram of the artists’ fan bases isn’t a circle. On their summer doubleheader tour, indie-rock heroes Yo La Tengo and Built to Spill are alternating between the starter and the closer positions, which is like having John Smoltz and Dennis Eckersley in the same pitching rotation.

Friday night, the show came to the Ryman. While the hallowed hall has a way of making most shows feel intimate, its capacity of more than 2,000 is admittedly a big jump from the audiences of 500 to 1,500 these groups have historically played for in Nashville. To be blunt, attendance was underwhelming, and that’s one of several factors that might have played a role — alongside increases in ticket prices and all the associated costs of seeing a concert that have outpaced many fans’ income growth. That said, it was still a show to remember.

Built to Spill at the Ryman, 7/11/2025
Photo: Victor J. Reed

If you went to venerable dive Springwater in the Aughts you were very likely to have heard Built to Spill’s 1999 album Keep It Like a Secret, their first record to chart on the Billboard 200, coming from the jukebox. That’s where a lot of my knowledge of the Idaho rockers comes from, absorbed via other people who love them dearly. But I do have a great love for the kinds of guitar heroes who influence BTS frontman Doug Martsch, like Neil Young, Johnny Marr and J. Mascis.

At one point, Built to Spill featured three guitarists including Martsch, but for about the past decade the band has been a power trio. The current lineup features two top-notch players in the rhythm section, Melanie Radford on bass and Teresa Esguerra on drums, who gave Martsch a rock-solid foundation and tons of space to fill with gritty riffs and white-hot solos. The set list touched just about every corner of the wry and heartfelt BTS catalog, from 1994’s There’s Nothing Wrong With Love through 2023’s When the Wind Forgets Your Name, Martsch’s first LP with Radford and Esguerra. Mother Church parishioners seemed to have a keen response, as you could hear shouts of “I love you Doug!” during nearly every quiet moment.

There were even fewer people in the seats when the intermission was over. Those who left probably had no regrets. But if you did cut out early, you missed the best YLT show of the many I’ve experienced.

Their performance was such a good reminder of all the things I love about Yo La Tengo’s fearlessly creative approach to music. Ira Kaplan, Georgia Hubley and James McNew — who got their start in New Jersey but have spent so much time in Music City they count as honorary Nashvillians — all rotate instruments and vocal duties throughout their sets. The stage setup always feels like they’ve invited fans into their rehearsal studio, even in a big room like the Ryman. After opening with the widely loved “Autumn Sweater,” the trio quickly abandoned the “Greatest Hits” approach to dive into the exceptionally broad variety of sounds that makes up their work.

The first part of the night focused on the band’s mellow side, showing off how deep their still waters run with jazzy electric piano, poetic vocal deliveries and spacious percussion. Noting that they had played Ramones and Richard Hell songs at their first CBGB gig and covered the Dead at the Fillmore, Kaplan mentioned that the Mother Church offered another opportunity to pay tribute, which teed up Hubley’s downtempo rendition of Johnny Cash’s “I Still Miss Someone.”

But as the show progressed, the sounds got louder and more abrasive. By the conclusion, Kaplan was using his guitar to unleash the sort of free-form noise that I always enjoyed from Sonic Youth or Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music. I decided to follow some others from the balcony and sneak downstairs for the encore of YLT’s “Beanbag Chair” and “One Hundred Years From Now” from The Byrds’ groundbreaking country-rock LP Sweetheart of the Rodeo. Even the floor was full only nearest to the stage, bringing the vibe a little closer to the club circuit where the two bands have been making memories for decades.