I’ll level with you – I’m probably not the right person to ask about value for money when it comes to live music. The eye-watering prices for, say, the Taylor Swift Eras tour, or Ticketmaster’s “dynamic pricing” scheme, leave me lost for words.
Plus, being part of the glamourous cabal of elite music reviewers, we don’t always have to cough up for entry to a show.
When picking up my pass I did overhear someone at the box office paying, I think, £35 to get into Yo La Tengo, although he could have been going to see Sleater Kinney at SWG3’s TV Studio. It’s a busy night for sure, forcing us to make a decision on which icons of US indie rock to pay homage to,
We’re in the larger Galvanisers, and it doesn’t seem that the attendance has been hit by the alternative gig, which Ira Kaplan later mentions is “like, 15 feet away”. Happily the soundproofing is up to the job.
Pre-show, Yo La Tengo announced that here would be two sets, no support. For hard core fans of course, that has to be A Good Thing. Can’t be sure how the more casual observers would feel, and there are probably a lot of them here tonight, for a band who have, it seems, have a following that has grown over the years. I can recall a small show, in I think, Cottier’s, many moons ago, and then one in the Liquid Room more recently. But nothing like this, where the as-expected 50-something blokes are joined by a goodly number of female fans young and old, and, it seems, plenty of family groups – some excellent parenting clearly at play.
No support though? Sometimes, especially with an act from far-flung shores, there can be a real find if you get along early enough. That said, you might also encounter Oasis. Them’s the breaks. Here, the support is technically Yo La Tengo themselves – and though it’s not immediately obvious, there will be a ‘quiet’ set, followed by a more raucous one.
That theory is challenged by the track the band are playing when we finally arrive in the venue – ‘Sinatra Drive Breakdown’. Sounding more like a statement of intent for the promised second set, the opener – also the track that kicks off current long-player ‘This Stupid World’ – is classic YLT, softly half-spoken vocals over a kosmische groove peppered with bursts of guitar noise.
The new album will understandably get a fair outing tonight – ‘Tonight’s Episode’ sees James McNew take over vocals for something that could have come from his side-project Dump, albeit with a fast 4/4 beat.
As ever, the beauty of Yo La Tengo is the sheer variety in their back catalogue, as they then dip back into ‘There’s A Riot Going On‘ for a take on ‘Ashes’, Georgia Hubley moving from behind the kit to stage front to offer a more delicate, slower sound.
The new long-player understandably is the focus here, so much that there’s no between-song chat up till ‘Until It Happens’ – a standout tune as good as anything from the band’s considerable canon. “That was from our new album,” Kaplan says, “and so is this one” before promising to find “something more entertaining to say” later on.
Which he does, correlating the universal love of sport(s) across Europe and the corresponding interest in the Oasis reunion (the chorus of boos from the crowd rather disproving this theory).
There are further delves into the “100 or so”-strong back catalogue, the opening bars of a beautiful take on ’Nowhere Near’ greeted by whoops of excitement rather than those reserved for mention of the brothers Gallagher. This first set indeed has its quieter moments, the band drawing easy comparisons to Low with their fragile vocal harmonies, or even Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy when Kaplan delivers in a rich baritone.
Then, an intermission and, apparently, the chance for us to dig out our earplugs.
To be fair, despite a pretty coruscating take on ‘Cherry Chapstick’ that opens the second set, the volume isn’t too much for those of us who haven’t yet got round to replacing the hearing protection lost at the Playhouse earlier in the year. Instead of full-on noise, we get beats interspersed with textured sounds and regular dreamy vocals to temper any harshness – ‘Moby Octopad’ a good example and another one greeted like a long-lost friend.
It becomes noticeable that this second set, with its extended codas and general rocking out, is actually just one long song – the band, still swapping instruments including McNew and Hubley on drums while Kaplan wrings great squalls of feedback out of his guitars. And we get the whole gamut, from newie ‘Fallout’ to 1989’s ‘Barnaby Hardly Working’.
First time I saw this band – at the ‘Magic Weekend’ festival in the mid-90s – Stephen Pastel joined the band for a version of ‘Speeding Motorcycle’. And he’s in the crowd tonight, but instead it’s two other guitarists – Norman and Raymond out of Teenage Fanclub – who amble onstage to take part in the closing number ‘I Heard You Looking’. Quite how they found the time to rehearse together is unclear, though the track does develop into something of a guitar wigout that takes on a life of its own.
Of course there are encores, and of course they are unconventional. Ira Kaplan decides, perhaps unwisely, to ask the audience for requests before realising that those down the front are most likely to opt for hidden gems unheard in decades. Instead, it’s someone in a Part Chimp t-shirt who selects ‘Black Flowers’ – “oh no, an acoustic guitar” quips someone behind me – before the Fannies return for takes on The Seeds’ ‘Can’t Seem To Make You Mine’ and Gene Clark’s ‘Feel A Whole Lot Better’ – the latter of which, at least, one would suspect needed little practice.
All done then – 22 songs, well over two hours of entertainment and a probably never-to-be-repeated guest slot from local heroes as legendary as the headliners. And no Oasis. If that’s not value for money, then I don’t know what is.
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