On Friday 9 October, Matador Records will release Yo La Tengo’s Sleepless Night – a six-song EP with one new tune (‘Bleeding’) plus covers of songs by The Byrds, The Delmore Brothers, Bob Dylan, Ronnie Lane, and The Flying Machine.
The tracks on Sleepless Night were initially released as one side of an LP, included within a limited-edition catalogue accompanying the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s career retrospective for the Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara. A longtime YLT fan, Nara worked in collaboration with the group – Georgia Hubley, Ira Kaplan, and James McNew –to choose the EP’s songs.
Ira Kaplan on Sleepless Night: “We met Yoshitomo Nara in 2003, would see him at his art shows and our concerts. We DJ’d at an opening at the Asia Society, and on another occasion he drew a picture of Georgia strangling me on a Gloomy pencil case that became one of Georgia’s prized possessions until it was stolen from her at the bar at the K-West hotel in Shepherd’s Bush. To make the catalogue of his 2020 exhibit at LACMA more personal, the idea came up to include an LP of some of Nara’s favourite songs as part of a deluxe edition. We were asked to provide one side of the LP (and that one track be a new composition), with the other side being another six songs selected by Nara, in their original versions. Here are the six songs we contributed to the LACMA record, chosen in collaboration with Nara.”
Stream ‘Wasn’t Born To Follow‘ (The Byrds cover) here.
