Yo La Tengo

Yo La Tengo at London Bush Hall, Tue 05 Sep

Review by Mike Diver

‘Season Of The Shark’ accurately summarises half of Yo La Tengo’s set this evening: the band – completed, of course, by James McNew on bass and keys and Kaplan’s wife Georgia Hubley on drums and keys – switch from serene passages of sweet indie-pop, a la the aforementioned Summer Sun LP highlight, to screaming squalls of intense guitar riffing that blindside the front row, leaving them slumped onto monitors, stage lights burning the back of their necks like newspaper lit by an unattended grill...»

Bush Hall

Tube: Shepherds Bush (4 mins)

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Yo La Tengo

At the begining of 1984, Georgia was working on an animated movie with her sister. I was mixing bands at Maxwell's. We'd play cover songs in our basement, emerging at the occasional party at which we'd get anybody we could coerce to play bass and, especially, to sing. We were also half of Jon Klage's backup band, but as Jon has just had a dream in which it was revealed to him that he would be kicking us out - commemorated in the title cut of his solo EP "In a Dream" - our days were numbered. Somewhere along the line we started writing a few songs...

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