music Rock ’n’ roll at its purest is supposed to be loud, raw and (occasionally) a little scary, which explains why so many of the form’s finest practitioners have been unpleasant people with a few screws loose. The three members of the Hoboken, New Jersey-based Yo La Tengo, who played to a sold-out Starr Hill audience last Thursday, are on another trip. Married couple Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley have a working relationship stretching back more than two decades, while Charlottesville native James McNew has been onboard since 1991. They are by all accounts stable, respectable and generally pretty nice, but don’t hold that against them.
Though aged as indie rockers go, Yo La Tengo are still drawn to extreme volume and performance that flirts with chaos. The decibel count on the rave-up “Watch Out for Me Ronnie” had to approach a venue record. Kaplan relished generating sounds in unorthodox ways, whether pounding his elbows on his keyboard during the blistering opener “Sudden Organ” or generating a mess of feedback by rubbing his guitar strings against a mic stand during the epic noise odyssey “Pass The Hatchet, I Think I’m Goodkind.”
The art of noise: Yo La Tengo shake the walls and rattle the floors at Starr Hill.
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The energy and joy on display during these moments of rock theater was contagious, but Yo La Tengo impressed equally in their delicate mode. A mid-set string of quieter tunes from the band’s most recent album was met with rapt attention. A few people chattered away during Hubley’s whispery and intimate vocals on “The Weakest Part” while others tried to shush them, but the band didn’t seem to mind; we were in a bar, after all, and the scene during the ballads ultimately was marked by mutual respect. As a whole, the show was a lesson on how a band can continue to grow with artistry and dignity intact, rock mythology be damned.
