Yo La Tengo at The Basement East, 4/14/2018
Back in 2002, The Onion ran its now-classic story, “37 Record-Store Clerks Feared Dead in Yo La Tengo Concert Disaster.” It's funny ’cause it's true: People who love getting deep into the weeds about music love YLT, including a couple of Grimey’s staffers who (among others) waxed rhapsodical about the New York/New Jersey indie Renaissance band in our April 12 story.
There were no disasters at the trio's shows Friday and Saturday at The Basement East, thankfully — just good energy, great music and, given the band's deep Music City connections, a slight class-reunion vibe. Midway through Friday’s show, The Spin caught up with Kurt Wagner of Yo La Tengo's longtime Nashville co-conspirators Lambchop. He reckoned it was the first time he's gotten to just chill out at one of their shows — to not have had to play, or tech, or anything — since he met them.
Yo La Tengo at The Basement East, 4/14/2018
These gigs were pretty much unfiltered Yo La Tengo, which contains multitudes. Going without an opener, each show consisted of two sets broken up by a brief intermission. For the many fans who were there for both, that's six hours of YLT music. And no one was complaining. The first set of each night was all about vibes and textures, while the second was about feedback and solos — the make-out set, followed by the rock-out set. Together, they provided many opportunities for fans to just geek out, awestruck at both the parts and the whole of the band.
The vibey sets emphasized Yo La's delicate touch, and consisted largely of atmospheric, hushed, hypnotic material off the group's latest, There's a Riot Going On. Riot is the band's most low-key record since 2000's And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out (one of seven LPs the band made with Nashville-based producer Roger Moutenot). There was much switching up of instruments, with James McNew — YLT’s Swiss army knife of a bassist — moonlighting on auxiliary drums on Riot opener “You Are Here” and upright bass on the lovely “Deeper Into Movies.” From singer-guitarist Ira Kaplan, we had both Dead-like noodling (on “I'll Be Around,” he actually botched the solo, a comforting reminder that even virtuosos make mistakes) and plenty of literal shoegazing. Kaplan is a great singer in his own low-key way, operating comfortably in a bunch of different registers. You just don't notice it because he's doing it all so softly.
Yo La Tengo at The Basement East, 4/14/2018
Friday’s second set was all about Kaplan's six-string prowess, the striped-shirted guitar god blanketing ’90s faves “Tom Courtenay,” “Stockholm Syndrome” and “From a Motel 6” with glorious fuzz, giving the crowd a second wind leading into the final act. Kaplan cut loose for “Ohm” and “Pass the Hatchet, I Think I'm Goodkind,” a pair of drawn-out, driving, open-ended tunes off more recent records that his reverent audience was happy to get lost in.
Night 2's rock-out set, meanwhile, featured no repeat numbers. And where the former put an emphasis on Kaplan's ripping solos, the latter was drummer Georgia Hubley's time to shine. Her human-metronome capabilities amazed on “Before We Run,” a gem of a song off 2013's Fade, on which guitars build up and explode as she maintains the same clocklike beat throughout.
Second-night show-goers also got a whopping five selections off 1995's Electr-O-Pura, the second album Yo La made with Moutenot and first after he moved to Nashville. The muscular, ferocious “Blue Line Swinger” drove home the tough-to-overstate achievement that is the three-piece’s wall of noise.
Yo La Tengo at The Basement East, 4/14/2018
Upon returning for the final encore on Saturday, Kaplan shouted out a fan in the front row who wore a The Clean shirt Friday and a Half Japanese shirt Saturday — “two of our favorite bands,” he said, and the latter of which has collaborated with YLT — then rewarded him with a a dirty, skronky rendition of HJ’s “Firecracker,” with the members switching up instruments. They directly followed that with Jackson Browne's ’80s-teen-movie anthem “Somebody's Baby,” played in the style of … well, YLT’s I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One-era selves.
As Kaplan put it during crowd fave “Autumn Sweater,” played late Saturday: “We could slip away / Wouldn't that be better?” It felt especially appropriate at these shows, which, like the new album, provided a much-appreciated escape from today’s social, political and economic problems. It was so nice just to be cocooned in warmth and mirth, sound and sanity, even for just a few hours — to spend some quality time with a band built on a love of music, and each other, and who's been putting off those good vibes longer than some in the audience have been alive.
See our slideshow for more photos from Saturday night's show.
In The Spin — the Scene's live review column — staffers and freelance contributors review concerts under a collective byline.
