New Jersey band Yo La Tengo have maintained a cult following for well over two decades with their mellow and dreamy rock. Interestingly, in recent years the band has gotten even bigger as new audiences discover their discography. Perhaps they have always been ahead of their time and now listeners are finally catching up. Regardless, they sold out two nights at Portland, Oregon’s Wonder Ballroom well in advance, with the second show taking place on Sunday, June 3.
In March, Yo La Tengo released their fifteenth full-length studio album There’s a Riot Going On, one of their strongest efforts in years. With a simple stage decoration of vinyl records hanging all around, the trio of Ira Kaplan, Georgia Hubley, and James McNew jumped right into the new material as they opened with the huge, pulsating instrumental track “You Are Here”. Another new song, “Forever”, slowly came to life with a breezy synth line and mellow lullaby harmonies of “she bop she bop”. Other highlights of the first set came from older fan favorites, like the quiet loungey “Ashes on the Ground” and an acoustic version of “Big Day Coming” with Georgia stepping up to the mike to sing. Throughout the first set, the band brought the same level of intimacy you would get in your living room as they let their slower songs wash over the audience like a warm bath.
The second set of the night would find the band showing off their more amplified material that went back to their earliest days. Ira took a wonderfully unhinged and weirdly funky organ solo on, appropriately, “Sudden Organ” before unleashing guitar feedback goodness on the crowd during “From a Motel 6”. The feedback would spill fourth once again during “Cherry Chapstick” before James McNew changed the groove with the light-hearted boogie tune “Mr. Tough”. Everyone would come together for the anthemic and infectious group harmonies of “Ohm” and the sprawling favorite “The Story of Yo La Tengo” with the latter driving Ira into a frenzy as he screamed out the vocals and wailed away on his instrument.
Though it may not seem obvious to the casual listener, Yo La Tengo have always been masters of the cover song in their ability to pull both well-known and obscure songs out of left field and put their own touch on them. They even released an album of mostly covers in 2015 called Stuff Like That There, and anyone who has attended their annual run of Hanukkah shows can attest to this. On Sunday, those that stuck around for the encore were treated to an appearance by Portland resident and REM member Peter Buck. Following the band’s take on Sun Ra’s “Dreaming”, Buck stepped up and joined the band for raucous renditions of Bob Dylan’s “I Wanna Be Your Love” and the frenetic Rolling Stones classic “19th Nervous Breakdown”, closing out their two-night run in spirited and lively fashion.
