In light of Yo La Tengo’s 30th anniversary this year, Ira Kaplan has been offering up three decades worth of tour diaries on the band’s website. If fans have learned anything from this daily rundown of opening acts both famous and forgotten, dingy clubs from Boston to Beijing, and road food both delicious and disgusting, it’s that Yo La Tengo has done pretty much everything an indie rock band can do--save for one thing: They’ve never released a proper live album.
While the odd live recording has made its way onto a 7-inch b-side or a compilation, their lack of a live LP is an oddity for a band of Yo La Tengo’s longevity and stature. At this point, trying to cram the many onstage moods of the band into a single, digestible document might pose a bit of a problem. They’re a band that contains multitudes. Here we’ve unpacked the moods and modes of the YLT live experience:
The Adorable: “Teenager In Love” + “Everyday”, 1988
Though multi-instrumentalist James McNew is an important creative force, YLT has always been centered around the husband-and-wife team of Kaplan and Georgia Hubley. The two can be exceedingly cute together—the platonic ideal of matrimonial and musical bliss. Check out this circa 1988 clip of the pair sweetly harmonizing their way through two oldies-but-goodies, seeming like the very teenagers in love they’re singing about.
The Brutal: “Mushroom Cloud of Hiss”, 1994
Then you’ve got pummeling, take-no-prisoners workouts like this one. McNew relentlessly slams out two notes and Hubley bashes her drums primitively as Kaplan wrangles wave after wave of vicious, squalling feedback out of his guitar. It’s Yo La Tengo at their most explosive and confrontational—invigorating, but a little exhausting, too.
The Playful: “You Can Have It All”, 2009
Yo La Tengo has always seemed a bit introverted on stage, but they occasionally throw in a bit of awkward-but-charming showmanship. The ultimate example of this is the choreographed routine that sometimes accompanies their cover of George McCrae’s 1974 disco chestnut “You Can Have It All”. As Hubley emerges from behind her kit to take the lead vocal, Kaplan and McNew coo “ba-ba-ba” behind her while rocking some gloriously goofy moves. Hubley looks faintly embarrassed, but she usually looks that way, regardless of what her bandmates are doing.
The Epic: “I Heard You Looking”, 1995
Every Yo La Tengo setlist has a healthy portion carved out for at least one mega jam. “Blue Line Swinger”, “Pass the Hatchet I’m Goodkind”, “The Story of Yo La Tango” and “I Heard You Looking” all provide the band with a launching pad for expansive, exploratory trips. The instrumental “I Heard You Looking” is YLT’s purest epic, as Hubley and McNew ride Kaplan’s Neil Young-ian, three-note riff into the stratosphere. This 1995 version is fairly economical, clocking in at just over eight minutes; in later years, the song would push well past the 15-minute mark. Neil Young would approve.
The Whispery: “Nowhere Near”, 2013
Yo La Tengo can bring even the noisiest of crowds to a hush with their ballads, the best of which showcase Hubley’s soft vocals. Twenty years after its first appearance on Painful, “Nowhere Near” remains a gorgeous, knee-weakening thing, Hubley leading the way with a simple, ascending keyboard riff, her bandmates filling in gently behind her. As the vocals drift into a wispy wordless chorus at the end, Kaplan plays a crashing, cacophonous solo that threatens to overtake the song entirely, but snaps back at the brink. A perfect, and utterly Yo La Tengo, moment.