Yo La Tengo – Today is the Day EP

The latest in a long line of post-album EP’s, Today is the Day is, in part, a welcome return to the noise-saturated rock of Yo La Tengo’s (relative) youth. These songs, mostly outtakes from the Summer Sun sessions, could have been recorded at any point in the past decade or so. After the subdued beauty of their last two full-lengths, the fuzz and drone of Today is the Day is a refreshing look back at the band’s mid-90s, Painful/Electropura era.
The rocking redux of “Today is the Day,” which starts the little record here, turns that fine song, so icy and airy on Summer Sun, into a head-bobbing, grimy nugget of a pop tune, a la “Tom Courtenay” or “Sugarcube.” You can file this song away as one of the all-time YLT singles, an all-aces broiler worthy of standing next to the afore-mentioned duo and “From a Motel Six,” and the one great lightning rod tune missing from Summer Sun. “Styles of the Times,” with its bouncy bass line and refreshing guitar freak-out, keeps the nostalgia pumping. The horn of William Parker fashions “Outsmartener” into the EP’s first sign of the present day; without that skronking horn “Outsmartener” and its churning feedback chug could have easily been on Painful, whereas with it there’s no way it could have been older than the past couple of years. Either way, it’s a damn good listen, anyhow.
A pretty little cover of Bert Jansch’s “Needle of Death,” as sung by Georgia Hubley, fills Yo La Tengo’s mandatory cover quota, and fills it with great verve, vim, and vigor. Next comes a herky-jerky instrumental of moderate note, “Dr. Crash,” that is neither here nor there. And bringing up the rear, finishing off this year’s YLT EP, is a live, acoustic rendition of “Cherry Chapstick,” that lone rocking song from 2000′s And Then Nothing Turned itself Inside Out. The original never impressed me much, and as such I was surprised at how much this mellow reworking worked. The central guitar melody, which always sounded too much like “Teenage Riot” for me, is far less obtrusive and far more pleasant when played on the deelectrified acoustical guitars. It’s a charmer, boy.
Beyond making some of the best music of any stripe over the past decade and a half, Yo La Tengo has struck such a chord with its legions of fans by maintaining its ever-flowing stream of new music. Today is the Day is more than just a treat to the hardcore fans, though; it’s a rock-solid collection of songs at dirt-cheap price, and could be a good introduction to Yo La Tengo’s daunting back catalogue.