Almost four decades into their career, a track like “Sinatra Drive Breakdown” should sound like a surprise. It should sound like a discordant, left turn for a band built around AM radio pop, windswept ballads, and drawn-out ambient montages, and if you’ve only been listening to the Yo La Tengo since 2006, that, and a lot of covers, are essentially all you’ve been hearing. But with its chugging bass line and feedback-laden theatrics, “Sinatra” and the fuzzy lead single “Fallout”, harkening back to classic-era Yo La Tengo, and the set of albums that have earned them entry into the world’s best rock band conversation.
Since I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass, the band has largely, forgone their harder edge, a symptom many presumed was a consequence of their graduation into a legacy band. Their output was still consequential though, albeit a little less riveting, as the band took the time to hone their softer more melodious side. That’s here too; after the one-two-three punch of the initial tracks, Georgia Hubley takes the reins for “Aselestine”, one of the prettiest and most delicate songs the band has ever written. It’s a moment that defines the immediacy of This Stupid World, and the feeling of rejuvenation that’s hard to ignore. 2018’s There’s a Riot Goin’ On would have been a career highlight for any group, but with bifurcated sequencing and long runtime, it only further cemented the band’s projected trajectory.
This Stupid World isn’t that much shorter, but with the two seven-plus minute closing tracks pushing towards the band’s more experimental and indulgent side, that leaves the remaining songs feeling prompt in their delivery of decaying pop and rock construction, even when it shouldn’t. “This Stupid World” and “Miles Away” may seem long-winded or out of place on first listen, but as the former collides the album’s thematic progress together into a mesh of kick drum and swirling distortion, the latter concludes the album under Hubley’s pensive non-lexical vocables and sputtering percussion. The result is the sound of the album falling apart, from its beguiling sadness to the resultant beauty of dismissing its own urgency.
With its innate energy and some of the group’s strongest songwriting in years, This Stupid World clearly stands out. Will it become a classic in the same way as Painful and And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out are? It’s too soon to say, but with Yo La Tengo biting their own “Tired Hippo” motif on “Apology Letter”, it’s fair to say that at least they’re making that comparison.
