This Stupid World
The wistful, slightly uncertain feeling you get from a Yo La Tengo album isn’t just one of the most reliable pleasures in indie rock; it practically defines the form. Their 17th studio album was recorded nearly 40 years after husband and wife Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley decided that, hey, maybe they could do it, too. *This Stupid World*’s sweet ballads (“Aselestine,” “Apology Letter”) and steady, psychedelic drones (“This Stupid World,” “Sinatra Drive Breakdown”) call back to the band’s classic mid-’90s period of *Painful* and *Electr-O-Pura*, whose domestications of garage rock and Velvet Underground-style noise helped bring the punk ethic to the most bookish and unpunk among us. Confident and capable as they are, you still get the sense that they don’t totally know what they’re doing, or at least entertain enough uncertainty to keep them human—a quality that not only gives the music its lived-in greatness, but also makes them the kind of band you want to root for, which their fans do with a low-key fidelity few other bands can claim.
Coming February 10: the most live-sounding Yo La Tengo album in years, This Stupid World. Times have changed for Yo La Tengo as much as they have for everyone else. In the past, the band has often worked with outside producers and mixers. In their latest effort, the first full-length in five years, This Stupid World was created all by themselves. And their time-tested judgment is both sturdy enough to keep things to the band’s high standards, and nimble enough to make things new. At the base of nearly every track is the trio playing all at once, giving everything a right-now feel. There’s an immediacy to the music, as if the distance between the first pass and the final product has become more direct. Available on standard black vinyl, CD and on limited blue vinyl.
On their liveliest album in at least a decade, indie rock’s most steadfast institution squares up against ubiquitous darkness.
Proving they are still relevant arbiters of rock, Yo La Tengo's This Stupid World is the mainstay's delivering an original take on the kind of indie rock they basically invented
This Stupid World bristles with a sense of uneasy quiet as the world outside rages and burns.
It’s the New Jersey trio’s 17th album and they’ve been pushing at their familiar style, finding cracks in the bedrock of their sound
Indie heroes Ira Kaplan, Georgia Hubley, and James McNew face impending doom with urgency and tenderness
Discover This Stupid World by Yo La Tengo released in 2023. Find album reviews, track lists, credits, awards and more at AllMusic.
"I want to fall out of time," sings Ira Kaplan in 'Fallout.' "Reach back, unwind." The fight against time will always be a losing one, but t...
Yo La Tengo’s superb 17th album, This Stupid World, sees the Hoboken trio make a triumphant stylistic return to peak form.
Yo La Tengo are back. Their 17th studio album ‘This Stupid World’ is a self produced, mostly recorded live, raw yet tender record that furthers their
The New Jersey trio regain an edge of unpredictability while maintaining their warm sound on their 16th record
This Stupid World by Yo La Tengo: chaos in beauty, grandeur in ugliness from the enduring Hoboken, NJ indie trio
This Stupid World by Yo La Tengo album review by Stephan Boissonneault . The indie rock legend's forthcoming release drops on February 10th
A quintessential<strong> </strong>YLT album – but this time, even as Ira Kaplan is wringing his guitar for noise, drummer/vocalist Georgia Hubley is turning down the volume<strong><br></strong>
It was only a matter of time before time itself would begin to stress out Yo La Tengo.
For some of us, time is measured in babies born, jobs worked, hobbies indulged in, and in our awareness of the ghost of our own mortality. We measure our successes against our failures and continue on, living as we can and loving as we’re able. But what happens when we try to break free of
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