Earlier this year, Yo La Tengo released Fade, a mighty, mighty fine album that hovers between heavenly and discordant, psych heavy and art bent. Basically, it's everything you want with a Yo La Tengo. However, as great as the songs are on Fade, the best one might have slipped through the cracks. "Super Kiwi" sounds like its genesis was the band trying to craft a krautrock tune before deciding to throw that demo through a "blistering noise" filter. The end result though is chaotic and disjointed, the steady, practically rhythmic roars of electronic noise contrast sharply with Ira Kaplan's calm, almost dreamy vocals and near transparent, "hear-it-then-it-disappears" guitar playing. Yet of course Yo La Tengo manages to easily meld all of these conflicting elements together seamlessly, turning a song that is ready to burst apart at any moment into something that just washes over the ears; a whirlwind of pure, noisy indie rock bliss that just dissipates as quickly as it explodes in its beginning. "Super Kiwi" is the sort of song I will never understand not making the cut of an album. It's so effortlessly perfect indie rock that I don't understand how the band wouldn't recalculate everything to make it fit.
Links:
Yo La Tengo's Website
Pre-order the Super Kiwi 7", and deluxe reissue of Fade here, from Matador Records
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other great ylt songs that didn't make their albums:
ReplyDeletetreading water
pencil test
styles of the times