Anti-Climacus

"This is not the forbidding experimentation of an aspiring vanguard. This is the fooling around of folks who like to go out on Saturday night and make some noise--and then go home humming it." -Christgau

I loved R.E.M. first, and have loved the Rolling Stones with a high intensity for a long time, but I think Yo La Tengo is my favorite band. People who play guitar tend to fall into a few camps: there are those who want to shred and those who want to learn enough sad songs to impress women,* those for whom guitar is a subcultural affectation, those for whom it's a symbol of something youthful and inarticulate and (therefore) vastly inferior to high-culture classical.** These people think it's fun to play Bach on the guitar. Avoid them. Then there are those, among whom I would number myself, for whom the ideal of playing the guitar is finding a nice chord sequence or riff, playing them over and over, and simply enjoying the sonic possibilities they hold. Yo La Tengo is the ur-band for this type of guitarist.

They played the two best shows I've ever attended, and any attempt to reckon my favorite songs of theirs would result in simply repeating the track listings of their best albums. I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One is the grab-bag and best introduction to the band, ...And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out is the most thematically coherent, Electr-O-Pura is one brilliant guitar line after another, Painful the moment at which it all came together.

For those of us who have listened to music from an early age, it's hard to avoid the analogy between music and love: we continue to listen to music that's new to us, however much of it occasionally disappoints, because every once in awhile, if you're lucky, there's a new, great song, and it gets to be a part of who you are from that moment forward. That's it. That's the law. That's the whole of the law.


*a.k.a. "sensitive jerks with acoustic guitars."

**these people usually like prog rock and pay way too much attention to stadium rock, and are determined to make music something other than fun and enjoyable. If it can't be translated into the realm of art, or brought into philosophy, it's not worth discussing. Not that I have anyone in mind in writing that. (This will now necessitate the "Persons attempting" tag.)