FILTER ALBUMS
Fool Hardy
Hoboken indie-rock perennials swap escapism for catharsis.
By Stevie Chick.
Yo La Tengo
★★★★
This Stupid World
MATADOR. CD/DL/LP
“THIS STUPID world/ It’s killing me,” murmurs Ira Kaplan on the title track to Yo La Tengo’s seventeenth album. It’s a bleak message, but in tune with an album dealing with those realities that ultimately cannot be negotiated away.
It marks a gear change from Yo La Tengo’s recent records. As the world became a darker, more conflicted place, the trio responded with music to cushion its blows. 2018’s There’s A Riot Going On might have titularly referenced the unrest then roiling Trump’s America, but its bruised lullabies and soft-focus feedback symphonies harboured few lyrical references beyond Here You Are’s message of retreat (“Tune out the world/Except our friends”). 2020’s We Have Amnesia Sometimes, meanwhile, was entirely wordless, its ambient drones an aural comfort blanket to blot out the anxieties of the Covid era.