Yo La Tengo

Yo La Tengo

I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass

(Matador)

3.5 of 5 Stars



By ERIC L. FRITZ

CRIMSON STAFF WRITER



Don’t get me wrong; I like NPR. During long commutes, there would be moments when the hip-hop and pop stations would be in commercial and the rock station busy fulfilling its hourly quota of Nickelback. In these times, National Public Radio gave me the latest news about all sorts of important things, like endangered species and Iran. It kept me occupied and even, secretly, made me feel mature and wealthy. But as much as I care about the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, it was never more than a minute or two before I switched back to something more interesting.

And this, in a nutshell, is the state shared by indie rock stalwarts Yo La Tengo circa 2006. After starting out their career with a series of exciting, creative, and loud albums, culminating in 1997’s “I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One,” senescence began to set in. Since then, their new releases have been called amiable, mellow, low-key, good, and bad, but never fun.

Despite the confrontational name, “I Am Not Afraid…” finds the group at the epitome of NPR-rock: every note and lyric has been expertly engineered to ensure that the listener’s pulse rate stays perfectly constant. Containing neither the experimental miscues of “And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out” nor the full-on snoozers of “Summer Sun,” every track here would make average-to-great background music. The melodies of “Mr. Tough,” “Sometimes I Don’t Get You,” and “The Weakest Part” are all practically begging to be looped underneath an announcement for upcoming programming during “All Things Considered”—catchy, but instantly forgettable.

For better and for worse, the instrumentation is more diverse than expected. Piano is all over the place, about as common as the guitar throughout. Strings sap up “Black Flowers.” The organ in “I Should Have Known Better” is used to nice effect, giving the illusion of fun. It’s a wonder how so many different sounds can be used to create something so monotonous.

The only traces of the band’s former three (or fewer) chords and a cloud of dust Velvet Underground homage style are in the tracks that bookend the album, “Pass the Hatchet, I Think I’m Goodkind” and “The Story of Yo La Tango.” But while the track finds a nice few-note melody and leans on it for 10+ minutes like back in the day, there is a sense of restraint to the guitar solos that prevents them from really taking off.

That these two songs, as well as the 69-minute album as a whole, are too long to be listened to as an album is beside the point; I cannot imagine this being consumed any other way than as pure background, to be shortened or repeated as necessary for the purposes of the event.

This all sounds harsher than is fair. The band is, after all, 12 LPs and over 20 years into their career, and I suppose that it is preferable to continue to age gracefully than to try to put out as big a bang (or bigger) as they used to. This is a fantastic, light album, succeeding completely in doing something that isn’t very impressive.

I can’t imagine anyone listening to this if it were a group’s debut album. The attraction here is near-purely historical, and there’s nothing wrong with that—an album like “I Can Hear the Heart…” probably should be worth a lifetime of good standing among music aficionados. But next to the work of their prime, “I Am Not Afraid…” sounds more like a pledge drive than the programming you’ve come to expect from Yo La Tengo.

—Reviewer Eric L. Fritz can be reached at efritz@fas.harvard.edu.