Performer Notes
- Yo La Tengo: Ira Kaplan, Georgia Hubley, James McNew.
- Additional personnel: Tim Harris, David Henry (cello); Susie Ibarra (percussion); Kris Gillespie (programming).
- Engineers include: David Henry, Wayne Dorell.
- Principally recorded at Alex The Great, Nashville, Tennessee and The Pigeon Club, Hoboken, New Jersey.
- On its 10th, and undoubtedly sexiest album, Yo La Tengo creates a smoky, sonic novella to love and lovers, a lonesome pop record as beautifully stark as it is happy, and as full of detailed nooks and crannies as its riddling title implies. Songs like "Our Way to Fall," "Last Days of Disco" and especially "You Can Have It All" are simple pop love notes destined to become standards in some brave romantic world better than ours (if they are diary entries from the Kaplan/Hubley marriage, that is one happy union).
- The farfisa/guitar combo still propels most of these songs, but as Yo la Tengo has evolved as a band, its appetite for studio creations has been greatly broadened. Soft but thick sonic textures adorn nearly all these tracks, particularly the bookends--the opening drone-pop mantra "Everyday" is fine indie-dub, and "Night Falls on Hoboken," the 13-minute guitar space-out that closes the record, is hued psychedelic ambience for people with long attention spans.
Professional Reviews
Rolling Stone (1/4/01, p.118) - Included in Rolling Stone's "Top 50 Albums of 2000".
Rolling Stone (3/2/00, pp.91-2) - 4 stars out of 5 - "...a quiet, delicate meditation on their bond [as one of the most creatively fierce married band mates in music history]...singing their most confessional, intimate lyrics ever...It's a spell of blissful, psychedelic make-out music..."
Spin (4/00, pp.189-90) - 8 out of 10 - "...Brooding and staid....[their] classic elements appear in fine form....slow dances evoking the deep calm of disappointment made familiar, even comfortable, by redemption - a pattern that over time has its own beauty..."
Entertainment Weekly (3/3/00, p.75) - "Listening to this gentle musical love story is like eavesdropping on a whispered late-night conversation between Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley....their prettiest album, and it's guaranteed to make you jealous." - Rating: A
Q (4/00, p.100) - 4 stars out of 5 - "...continues to play slow and loose with that same ascetic blueprint....a thoroughly life-affirming reverie."
Uncut (3/00, p.92) - 4 stars out of 5 - "...A gentle, reflective album about love from three maturing noiseniks..."
Alternative Press (3/00, p.96) - 4 out of 5 - "...Yo La Tengo aqre playing together wonderfully well here....the hushed, often beautifully harmonized vocals...are the most pleasant surprise here....their most mature fully realized work to date..."
Magnet (1-2/01, p.45) - Included in Magnet's "20 Best Albums of 2000" - "...A jazz-like, hypnotic quietude, yeilding an introspective...tension that squalls beneath the surface..."
The Wire (2/00, p.56) - "...Imaginatively paced pop drones....shifting painlessly from heavy lidded, cocktail lounge leanings...to cheeky Sonic Youth THOUSAND LEAVES-era guitar grind....cute, clever and accomplished..."
CMJ (1/08/01, p.20) - Included in CMJ's "Best of the Year" for 2000.
CMJ (1/6/03, p.20) - Included in CMJ's list of "Top 25 College Radio Albums of All Time"
CMJ (3/6/00, p.3) - "...drawing inspiration from its members' personal lives....the trio has truly turned its muse inside out here, creating a work of magnitude and heart..."
Melody Maker (3/14/00, p.53) - 4 stars out of 5 - "...[They] have further refined their baby's-bottom-smooth sound and come up with a gem..."
Mojo (Publisher) (2/00, pp.86-7) - "...A beautiful, fragile, record that demands your full attention....There's something utterly unpretentious about this album, maybe due to its themes: love, marriage, the course of a relationship - their relationship..."
NME (Magazine) (12/30/00, p.78) - Ranked #14 in NME's "Top 50 Albums Of The Year".
NME (Magazine) (2/19/00, p.33) - 9 out of 10 - "...a twilight minimalism of post-folk strums and distant hums, all the better to tighten the focus on [Ira] Kaplan and [Georgia] Hubley's confessionals....A clearly adult, unfashionably sensitive document....It works...Like a dream."
