Track Listing

1. Pass The Hatchet, I Think I'm Goodkind
2. Beanbag Chair
3. I Feel Like Going Home
4. Mr. Tough
5. Black Flowers
6. The Race Is On Again
7. The Room Got Heavy
8. Sometimes I Don't Get You
9. Daphnia
10. I Should Have Known Better
11. Watch Out For Me Ronnie
12. The Weakest Part
13. Song For Mahila
14. Point And Shoot
15. The Story Of Yo La Tengo

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9987 in Music
• Released on: 2006-09-12
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.com
This bold, eclectic, 80-minute album is the pinnacle of the band's twenty-year career. From eleven-minute guitar jams to gorgeous ballads to winsome horn-drenched pop songs, this album is all over the map, in a very good way. Features the talents of longtime Nashville producer Roger Moutenot, violinist Dave Mansfield of Dylan's Rolling Thunder Review, and the jacket artistry of Gary Panter (Raw, Jimbo).

More from Yo La Tengo

I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One	Painful	And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out
Fakebook	Electr-O-Pura	Prisoners of Love (Double Disc Anthology)

Amazon.com
It's no surprise that a group named after something said during a baseball game would title an album after something said during a basketball match. It is a bit of a surprise that this band remains so incredibly good, and capable of surprising even longtime listeners. This one's so diverse and such a mixture of different styles, it's reminiscent of the group's all-request on-air shows they play annually to support New Jersey-based radio station WFMU. Book-ended by two long, droney tunes, you've got garage-rock rave-ups, country-pop, horn-driven R&B, little gorgeous atmospheric songs, some brilliant falsetto singing, and... this list could go on and on. Who else would think to pair conga-style percussion to a Suicide-esque synth drone? Or even to work with longtime Dylan collaborator and strings arranger and violinist David Mansfield and have genius illustrator Gary Panter do the artwork at the same time? It's the little things that matter, especially when you mastered the big ones twenty-plus years ago. --Mike McGonigal

Customer Reviews

Fun And Cool
My first contact with this Band was seeing the album and buying it solely because of the title. When it came in I listened to it twice and enjoyed it very much. It's hard describe the style since it morphs while listening and their influences are varied. In general a fun and cool, refreshing album.

Velvet Mayfield
If this is your first taste of Yo La Tengo be in for a surprise. You might think that this is just another Velvet Underground clone trying to make their own 'Sister Ray' in the opening track. But after those repetetive 11 minutes are over you find out there is more to it.

Sweet soul vocals in the style of Curtis Mayfield, even including a great horn part. There's some jazz, some darker stuff and some noisy songs that reminded me of the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and Sonic Youth.

A lot of emotions are addressed on this album. Boredom and repetition, homesickness but also happyness.

Good CD, not great, not their best, not the best album of 2007. But Good.

Place Holder
Yo La Tengo aren't one of the most popular rock bands in the world, just one of the finest and most consistent. Over 20-plus years of work, they have established absolute authority over the post-Velvets drone-rock genre, without aping the Velvets' portentous implacability. The Tengo come off instead as friendly, slightly shy, next-door-neighbor types who just happen to write insanely catchy, frequently very noisy songs in a cornucopia of rock and pop styles -- songs that, oddly, tend to get more engaging the longer they last. Just because they're so open-hearted for an indie rock band doesn't mean Yo La Tengo aren't talented as hell.

Their latest release comes with an ironic title (visually and aurally, neither husband-and-wife team Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley nor bassist James McNew are bullies) and is bookended with astonishing epic numbers. In between, things veer from essential to iffy. Possibly the greatest flaw here, though, is a largely absent sense of urgency. Even at their quietest, as on the rapturous marital diary "And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out" (2000), they've conveyed the sense that some gut-spilling was going on, however politely. Outside the two epics, a spooky instrumental, McNew's "Black Flowers" and some lovely cuts of Georgia's, their latest material settles for a pleasant rehash of old moves. That would be an accomplishment for many acts; for this one it's a mild disappointment.

Are Yo La Tengo (Spanish for "I've got it") still open-hearted? Possibly, but "I Am Not Afraid..." suggests that they aren't sharing any new details. That said, it's a much stronger album than 95 percent of what gets cranked out for our consumption, either by the music industry or by DIY rock acts. If it isn't the ideal starter kit for budding Yo La Tengo fans (that would be 1997's "I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One"), anyone who hears it first will want to hear more. As they should.