Yo La Tengo – Summer Sun

When Yo La Tengo’s less than auspicious debut album, Ride the Tiger, emerged back in 1984, no one could have predicted, least all of co-founders Georgia Hubley (vocals/drums) and Ira Kaplan (vocals/guitars), that the band would be regarded as one of America’s most resilient, most reliable, and most re-inventive art-rock groups, almost 20 years down the timeline. The secret to this sustained critical (and more recently commercial) success? It’s hard to pinpoint exactly, but an open-minded cliché-free attitude to making music, combined with an unshakeable affection for classic pop craftsmanship, certainly must have something to do with it, as evidenced here on this 10th (or thereabouts) album.
Refusing to rest on their laurels by lazily duplicating 2000′s breakthrough set, And Then Nothing Turned itself Inside Out, Yo La Tengo push forward in fashioning their retro-futuristic pop wares with the zeal and zest of a band half their age. From the ethereal opening of “Beach Party Tonight” to the closing sad-core country cover of Big Star’s “Take Care,” Summer Sun stretches Yo La Tengo’s musical boundaries even further than before, as well as reaching back to tie-up loose ends from past master works. In the latter respect the trio obligingly revisit the gliding space-rock of 1993′s Painful (“Little Eyes”), the blissful mellow interludes from 1997′s I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One (“Today is the Day”) and the slow-mo melancholy of And Then Nothing… (“Nothing but You and Me”). When it comes to pushing the post-rock envelope, the deliveries come with plenty of adventurous aplomb. Hence the mischievous “Moonrock Mambo” sets a hipster beat-poem to a swinging/shuffling Sea and Cake backing-track, the surging voodoo-funk of “Georgia Vs. Yo La Tengo” pays an honourable homage to both Parliament and Money Mark, and the remarkable 10-minute post-jazz odyssey, “Let’s be Still,” somehow manages the impossible feat of cross-breeding Miles Davis’ In aSilent Way with The Beach Boys’s Sunflower.
Although Summer Sun yet again celebrates the collaborative work ethic that has served Yo La Tengo so well in recent years, it also showcases the trio’s individual talents. Which means that the chiming “Season of the Shark” is Ira’s best pop straight-ahead song since “Sugarcube” (from I Can Hear…), and the luscious waltzing “Winter A-Go-Go” provides another sensuous vehicle for Georgia’s untouchably gorgeous vocals. However, it’s Yo La Tengo’s criminally unsung third player, bassist/vocalist James McNew, who contributes arguably the finest moment on Summer Sun, with the seriously lovely “Tiny Birds” – a serene swirl of elegiac strings, mellifluous acoustic guitars, throbbing bass, and huggable harmonies.
With its delectable mix of playfulness, poignancy, and mad-eyed (but melodic) experimentation, Summer Sun is an essential Yo La Tengo purchase, almost up there with Fakebook, Painful, and I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One. Where the band go will next is unclear, but based on this career progress-report, it’s highly unlikely that the creative juices will be drying up anytime soon.