There are a wealth of adjectives you could use to describe indie rock stalwarts Yo La Tengo. Dedicated. Adventurous. Prolific. Ethereal. Intense, and so on. But for all of the many, generous descriptors, the most apt is probably consistent. For more than three decades, the New Jersey triumvirate of guitarist Ira Kaplan, his wife, the drummer Georgia Kaplan, and bassist James McNew have maintained a workmanlike posture, gamely putting out new and fantastic creations every few years or so. Their collection of records is at once towering in its musical breadth and quality, while also remaining wholly inviting to new fans and casual observers alike.
Their latest album, There’s A Riot Going On, sits quite comfortably next to some of their greatest, earlier achievements, like 1997’s I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One and their breakthrough 1993 release Painful. On a sonic level, Riot is breathy and mysterious, brimming with unconventional sounds and textures. Pianos clash against guitars. Cymbals clang against bass riffs. Vocal melodies blend together and split off in totally different and opposing directions. As much as an album can be a mood, There’s A Riot Going On is a feeling and atmosphere all its own. Dark and light; infinite and cloistered.
As its title denotes — the similarity between this record and the acclaimed Sly Stone masterpiece There’s A Riot Goin’ On is purposeful — it’s also political document, even if the politics within are hard to discern. For Ira Kaplan, that’s the entire point. “I’ve quoted this before, but the band The Scene Is Now have a song where kind of what I’ve always felt was the key lyric is, “There’s politics in every song,” and then they start singing, ‘La la la la la,'” he said by phone. “You know, obviously that’s a political statement to sing, “La la la.” As much as I tried to get him to elaborate, he insists that it’s up to you, the listener, to discover for yourself the statement Yo La Tengo is hoping to convey.
I recently spoke to Kaplan about Yo La Tengo’s immersive new album, and how the band has evolved and grown over the last 30 years.
Your last album Stuff Like That There was mostly a covers record. How did it feel to get back to creating new music?
It was great. One of the things that is great about being in our band is that we get to work completely on our own schedule. We don’t feel that pressure, that there’s the record company calling us up to say, “Alright, we need to know your schedule,” and, “This is your schedule.” It’s really completely on our own clock. We did that as kind of a detour. We did some work on films. Then, I was going to say, “almost without knowing it,” but literally without knowing it, we realized one day we were actually working on our new record. It kind of snuck up on us. We thought it was aimlessly and then we realized there was an aim, we just weren’t paying attention.
Is there any kind of a downside to that level freedom? Like knowing when to stop?
Absolutely. I think that’s a classic problem. Ultimately, at a certain point, we kind of see that we’ve got something that we’re happy with. Then we sit down with Matador and kind of come up with a target for when a new record might come out, which is obviously down the road. They’re having those conversations with other people on the label, but at that point we have a date we hope the record will come out and a date that we need to deliver something to make that happen. We just kind of reached a point where we said, “Alright, let’s stop coming up with new things and just keep focusing on the things we have right now,” and that almost works. I think we only came up with a couple of new things after promising we’d come up with no more new things.
Can you kind of describe that moment of catharsis when you realized, “Oh, this is an album?”
I don’t remember the precise moment. We were spending lots of time recording things on Pro Tools. James was doing that, but that’s not unusual. In the line of film work we do it that way. We did pretty involved demos for Fade, a lot of which we end up kind of using pieces of on the record. So, for us to be recording in our practice space was far from an unusual experience. We were just doing it a lot. And I think one day we kind of thought, you know, “This isn’t necessarily the basis for another record. This actually is the record.” It kind of raised the pressure a little bit. It went from screwing around to, “Alright, let’s get serious.”
Once you have the idea that this is going to be a cohesive document, I’d imagine that there’s got to be more thought, or effort, or process involved
I mean, not really. It was just the way we thought about it changed. I’m sure we were working just as hard before and after. It was more just how we treated it and treated ourselves.
Can you kind talk about that dynamic of producing the album yourselves?
You know, I’ve always thought band credits for production was…past the days of Phil Spector, I thought everyone took it as a given that the group was involved. You know, The Beatles were produced by George Martin and you know, you’re pretty sure that The Beatles kinda took a role in that as well. If they’re not co-producers, neither is Yo La Tengo. Basically, we worked on and did it, and James was the guy pushing all the buttons.
What is the chemistry in the band like at this point between the three of you? How do ideas get turned into songs?
Well, it’s not a democratic process in that if two people like something and the other person doesn’t, they’re out of luck. The goal is always to find something that everybody likes. If somebody’s not happy we assume that there’s a better way to do something. It’s different. It really depends on the song. It depends on the moment.
Why did you decide to name this album There’s A Riot Going On? Obviously, when you hear that name you immediately recall the Sly Stone album. What connection is there to that record?
We’re of course well aware of that record, so it’s not a coincidence. I love that record. We try not to choose a record title that’s not open-ended in a certain way, and one of the issues I have with doing interviews is that certain questions I think are asking me to close that which is open-ended, and I’m reluctant to do that. I just kind of let it percolate out there.
Let people come to their own conclusions, I totally get that. But, when people hear that name, I mean, obviously there’s a connotation of politics and for me at least, there does seem to be a feeling as I was listening to the album that you are engaging with the outside world to a degree that maybe you hadn’t done so in the past. Did the feeling in the air that kind of made it onto this record?
I’m not sure I would put it that way. I’m not sure I’m gonna put it another way [Laughs]. I think there’s a variety of ways to be engaged, and I think, to a certain extent, to a large extent, you have to be engaged, and if you appear to be disengaged that’s its own form of engagement, you know? You’re in the world, so the world is affecting you and you’re affecting the world. Is that vague enough?