Yo La Tengo - I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One

Year: 1997

Label: Matador

Did you realize this band has been kicking around since 1984? Goddamn. What where you doing in 1984? Probably some cross-over shit I would imagine.

So anyways, I, being an elitist snob, shunned this band for a long time (until the release of this particular album to be exact) based solely on the observation that their fans were dorks. Nerds. Geeks. Fags. Whatever you want to call them, those losers where stinking up the place. I imagined (and still do) a Yo La Tengo show to be on one step removed from a Star Trek convention (notice how I didn't say "Star Wars", because Star Wars is awesome enough to get tattooed on your body by the guitarist of Chokehold in the stifling heat of an un-air conditioned bedroom in hot ass Atlanta when you're 18...quite unlike Star Trek...that shit is retarded). Virgin central!

Well, when I finally pulled my head out of my ass and took an actual listen to the band I was a convert. I guess I "got it", whatever that means. Maybe I had just been a loser all along (highly doubtful), but something about their take on the Velvet Underground's style clicked. Their style is all over the place, from rock to folk to drone to pop to punk, but it's all played immaculately. 

DL