Yo La Tengo I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One Matador, 1997 amazon

Yo La Tengo is one of those bands that somehow i developed a completely inaccurate synopsis of before finally bothering to become acquainted with their work. While living in an apartment in Berkeley around 1995, my roommate Jayson brought the band to my attention with an offhand comment. I may have even seen a video of theirs on MTV, but somehow my brain became convinced that they were something akin to Weezer. During my indie renaissance circa 1998, i convinced myself to pick up the previous year's I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One ... they are the torchbearers of the independent music scene after all, and i felt i owed it to my record collection to give them the once over. Listening the album for the first time, i had two distinct impressions: 1) holy f@#k, this is goddam apes%&t, and 2) how come nothing on this sounds like "Buddy Holly"? The answer to 2 is of course that i'm an idiot. The album represents a shift in the musical career of Ira Kaplan, Georgia Hubley, and James McNew, transitioning from the feedback-drenched noise of their early career to the softer side that would emerge in full on the followup And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out. As such, I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One is the best of both worlds, merging outstanding melodic songwriting with bursts of rock'n'roll aggression and din. "Return to Hot Chicken" opens the record with a loose interpretation of the "Hot Chicken" songs from 1995's Electr-O-Pura. "Moby Octopad" unites a funky bassline with odd swells of feedback to achieve a rolling, building pop song, which is followed by the full-speed-ahead thrash of the upbeat "Sugarcube". The echoing, loose drumming on "Damage", accompanied by a lonely acoustic guitar riff and a gentle ripple of feedback noise, is downright haunting ("i feel like a kid again, my eyes are glued to the floor, i hope i mumbled goodbye as you walked out the door"), and is succeeded by another loud guitar drone in "Deeper into Movies". From there the album turns soft for a while, featuring Georgia's country-fied "Shadows", James's acoustic pop of "Stockholm Syndrome", and the band's foray into organ-driven pop on "Autumn Sweater". The latter half of the record includes the supremely loud update of the Beach Boys' "Little Honda", the atmospheric "Green Arrow" with its slide guitar and insect noises, and the pure sunshine pop number "Center of Gravity", which gets Ira and Georgia doing synchronized dance movements when performed live. The brilliance of I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One wraps up with the psychedelic freak-out of "Spec Bebop", a ten minute feedback symphony that manages to capture your attention through its length, the shoegazer standard "We're an American Band", and a melancholic pop song in "My Little Corner of the World". While neither as abrasive as their earlier work or as relaxed and smooth as their subsequent offerings, the album represents the particularly successful interlude in Yo La Tengo's career when they grabbed my attention. They still haven't let go.

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