Photo by Andrew Dowd. More on Flickr
For the past 25 years, Yo La Tengo has produced genre-defying music that has received nearly universal critical praise yet little mainstream success. In the decades since guitarist Ira Kaplan and drummer Georgia Hubley formed the group, they have released 12 studio albums, including 2009’s Popular Songs. The back album art of that most recent album – a striking array of beautiful buttons- graced the enormous stage backdrop on Sunday night at the Pageant as Kaplan, Hubley, and bassist James McNew ventured through a perfectly paced exploration of Yo La Tengo’s impressive repertoire.The band emerged onstage unceremoniously and immediately entered into the instrumental jam “And the Glitter is Gone.” Forty minutes and many songs later, Kaplan finally paused briefly to introduce the band before plunging back into the remainder of the two-hour set, punctuated only occasionally by banter from the stage. The three moved seamlessly from instrument to instrument, each contributing vocals on various songs, with Kaplan extracting not only melodies and rhythms but also waves of feedback from everything he touched. Throughout the set, melodic pop emerged only to be followed by frenzied, driven, rock. The pace slowed in the middle of the set with Hubley’s mesmerizing vocals on “I Feel Like Going Home” and acoustic versions of “Black Flowers” and “When It’s Dark” before rising again. The show culminated in a massive wall of noise and percussion in the midst of closing track “Little Honda,” an onslaught that gave way to one final chorus of the Beach Boys classic to conclude the night.
However, returning to the stage to answer the insatiable crowd’s ovations, the band delivered an encore of contrasting styles, including a song with openers Times New Viking, a Bob Dylan cover, and a cover of “Emulsified,” a grooving track by the 1960s Mexican soul singer Rex Garvin. Despite departing on that high note, the band returned for a second encore – and a powerful version of the crowd-pleasing “Autumn Sweater” – that concluded a memorable performance by the veteran trio.