Fade
Deep into their career, Yo La Tengo's sense of craft is intact. Fade, at a tight 10 songs and 46 minutes, is the band's shortest album since 1990's Fakebook; it may tread over some familiar turf, but the relaxed pacing and pleasing melodies belie just how much action is really going on beneath the serene surfaces.
With Yo La Tengo having now rounded the quarter-century mark (including more than two decades in its current lineup), it would be reasonable to expect the band to start slowing down a bit. Fade suggests the trio wouldn’t disagree: Defined by its dreamy ruminations on aging, the record is both a clear-eyed assessment…
Vintage Yo La Tengo, but somehow gorgeously grown-up, as timeless as their best.
Having spent nearly 30 years in a self-sufficient well-liked band is probably fair compensation, but you do wonder if New Jersey indie vets Yo La Tengo are vexed by everyone considering their best albums to have been made in the previous century.
What a gross prospect that a 30-years-going (and at least 20-years-miraculous) band like Hoboken's finest have to contend with critical acclaim, that tempestuous thing that doubts itself every so often when a band simmers for too long.
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It must be a relief to indie obscurists and what few record shop assistants remain that Hoboken trio Yo La Tengo have remained so prolific and consistent over their near thirty year history. Fade is Ira Kaplan and co’s first record since 2009’s Popular Songs, but closer in feel to And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out. And it’s just possible that it’s their best album since that 2000 benchmark; unlike many of the acts they share an audience with, nothing here is over-complicated.
Even a band as restlessly experimental as Yo La Tengo has to reach a plateau at some point.
If Yo La Tengo's career were human, it would have been granted the right to vote shortly after their 1997 album I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One. (Feel old yet?)
Art rockers Yo La Tengo's familiar new LP is a vast improvement on their last, writes <strong>Ally Carnwath</strong>
Fade should rub loyal fans the right way while welcoming newcomers into the YLT canon with a gentle hand.
Yo La Tengo's endlessly varied but always unmistakable sound works terrifically on this pleasingly compact album, writes <strong>Michael Hann</strong>
[xrr rating=4.5/5]There probably aren’t that many people coming at a fresh Yo La Tengo album expecting something markedly new, which, come to think of it, is probably fair.
Yo La Tengo - Fade review: Sounds like something somebody with a large portion of alt/indie in their piechart would like.
Hoboken indie legends Yo La Tengo's new album opens with a gentle, train-track rattle of percussion, writes Helen Brown.
Hoboken's veteran indie-rockers make a record of sweet simplicity. CD review by Russ Coffey