After three spins: "Stuff Like That There," by Yo La Tengo

After a long delay, I am finally writing about this album...

To understand and to appreciate Stuff Like That There fully, you have to connect it to Yo La Tengo's Fakebook, from 25 years ago. They even have said this is the 25 year anniversary follow-up to it.

I fell in love with Facebook, 18 years ago, when I picked up a copy while out with one friends before taking a quick road trip to San Diego. I convinced Nick and Mark to let me play Facebook, the entire ride that night. I don't think they got the album the way I got it. I was immediately hooked by the pedal steel, the countrified-folk-indie. The vibe. It set me out on a quest to find the original versions of all this fabulous covers. Over the years, Fakebook, remained one of my own personal cult-classic-ish albums.

To learn that Yo La Tengo were recording a follow-up of sorts? I was all in. Immediately.

Stuff Like That There is a nice, warm, comforting album. It's an album that I can cuddle with in a warm cabin somewhere. It's almost entirely acoustic. It sound the way watercolor landscapes look. It is nostalgia inducing. It is conversation starting. Or, even better, when conversation goes quiet, this album stands in and saves all from the silence.

One definite conversation starter is their version of The Cure's "Friday I'm in Love." So unexpected! So happy to hear this! It's exactly what a cover should be--paying respect to a song you admire by not recording an identical version. But instead to take the song, and reinterpret it to fit your own steez. Your own vibe.

Perhaps that's what is best about Facebook and Stuff Like That There. These are covers. But they are Yo La Tengo songs still. Even the Yo La Tengo originals are reinterpreted. But they are STILL Yo La Tengo songs. A prime example is the rethinking and reworking of their classic track "The Ballad of Red Buckets." It does the original from the album Electr-o-pura justice. And it fits into Stuff Like That There so well, it's almost like it it could not exist anywhere else.

One last piece of beauty I would like to mention here: Hank Williams' "I'm so Lonesome I Could Cry." Georgia's gentle delivery and her interesting pace of delivery bring a new sentiment to this song entirely. There's a feeling of resignation now rather than yearning. Reverb rich guitar lines add color to this art piece.

This album would be paired perfectly with a mug of hot chocolate.

Haul

A few Saturdays ago, I stopped in CD Trader in Tarzana, and this was my haul.

"Let My Children Hear Music," Charles Mingus

"In a New Setting," Milt Jackson

"Into My Arms," Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, 1997

"I don't believe in an interventionist God

But I know, darling, that you do

But if I did I would kneel down and ask Him

Not to intervene when it came to you

Not to touch a hair on your head

To leave you as you are

And if He felt He had to direct you

Then direct you into my arms"

This is a song of pure beauty. There is no other way to describe it. Nick's trademark baritone voice is as soft as it could ever be. And direct. Has there ever been a more direct opening line? Only a genius like Nick Cave could craft a line that shoots down every flimsy connection between religion and sappy love songs in the pop music cannon. Hey, I don't believe God's job is to bring you and I together... But just in case it is...

"Chesterfield King," Jawbreaker, 1991

"We stood in your room and laughed out loud. 

Suddenly the laughter died and we were caught in an eye to eye. 

We sat on the floor and did we sit close." 

Brian was a good friend. He offered to drive Mike and me to the airport one gray, wet morning for a flight to San Francisco. My first trip away from my family. First time on an airplane without them. Mike and I just wanted to run around San Francisco for the weekend. It was the late 90s, but we still sought to channel some Beat energy circa 1956.

Brian was in the driver seat. Mike in the passenger seat. He was much bigger than me. So I crammed into the tiny seats behind in Brian's pick-up truck. My knees pressed against my chest, my body positioned sideways, leaving my head to stare out the rear window at the 15 freeway and what we were leaving behind that morning.

A mixtape Brian had made was blasting through the truck speakers. The only song I remember from the drive was Jawbreaker's "Chesterfield King." A song I had heard many times before. But on that freeway drive, that song hit me in a new way. Like a first kiss. A first anything. 

The story Blake Schwarzenbach howls is the classic teenage love angst song. But he captures his feelings in a novel way and layers the song atop the punk chord changes. The energy of the music matches the energy that teenagers keep hidden in their heads, their chests, their other places. 

"I took my car and drove it down the hill by your house. 

I drove so fast. 

The wind it couldn't cool me down, so I turned it around and came back up."

The best line of the song. The pseudo-chorus above, paints the clear picture of a tiny moment that means so much. Not many songwriters are able to capture these tiny moments. Blake can. And although I never drove my car down a hill by any girl's house to cool myself off, Blake sings it with so much heart and honesty, I feel like I have. Maybe I did. I don't remember. 

And a live version because WHY NOT?

Rest in Peace, Bob Johnston

I listened to Blonde on Blonde today without knowing that its legendary producer had passed away. 

Farewell Bob Johnston. 

   
                               

Haul.

On Thursday, August 12, I stopped in CD Trader in Tarzana. This is my haul.

Double Barrel, Dave and Ansel Collins. 180 gram reissue.

24 Hour Revenge Therapy, Jawbreaker, 20th Anniversary reissue.

"City Too Hot," Lee Perry

It's over 100 degrees today. This is the appropriate song.