With the release of their new album, There’s a Riot Going On, heading our way on March 16th, Yo La Tengo have shared another taste of what’s to come with new single ‘For You Too’. Listen below!
It’s an album stand-out track with a hypnotic guitar line, complemented by a low dose of drone and a deceptively upbeat drum patter, as Ira Kaplan sings quiet words of assurance: “For you / whenever there’s hurt / and things are uncertain / Maybe I could be that guy / I’d like to try.”
For Yo La Tengo this record is a slow-motion action painting, and Georgia Hubley, Ira Kaplan and James McNew did it all themselves, in their rehearsal studio, with no outside engineer (John McEntire later did the mix). They did not rehearse or jam together beforehand; they turned on the recorder and let things coalesce. Songs came together over long stretches, sometimes as much as a year going by between parts. You’d never guess this, since the layers are finessed with such a liquid brush. The album is available for pre-order here.
In 1971, when the nation appeared to be on the brink of violently coming apart, Sly and the Family Stone released There’s a Riot Goin’ On, an album of dark, brooding energy. Now, under similar circumstances, Yo La Tengo have issued a record with the same name but with a different force, an album that proposes an alternative to anger and despair. Their first proper full-length since 2013’s Fade, There’s a Riot Going On is an expression of freedom and sanity and emotional expansion, a declaration of common humanity as liberating as it is soft-spoken.
Stream / purchase ‘For You Too’: https://yolatengo.lnk.to/foryoutoo