Yo La Tengo: Fade — Album Review

Yo La Tengo is a band that has been around since 1986, and it might blow your mind to know that this is their 13th LP. That’s right, they have released THIRTEEN albums. These three indie rockers from Hoboken, New Jersey have been going for 30 years, and that experience has resulted in a very well crafted album.

Fade feels like a group of guys who got together to make something that they loved and invited their wives and girlfriends over to listen to the whole process. There is a whimsical love that comes out of the tracks, a feeling that if someone hadn’t told the band to stop playing, they would have kept on smiling at their loved ones and just lightly jamming out.

This album could be called the epitome of indie rock, with simple, often acoustic guitars that drive in front a tight and tiny sounding drum kit, and soft, almost whispered vocals caressing the ears. Light strings and the occasional horns accent soft amped clean guitar solos on songs like “Stupid Things” and “Cornelia and Jane”.

None of the songs could be called “heavy”. Even the song Paddle Forward, with it’s extra guitar distortion, retains a lightness of spirit that permeates the entire album, even if some of the songs are of lost love and heartbreak.

Fade is a very well produced album in the way that it captures the feeling that we are sitting around with a the band as they place. It would be odd if this felt like a stadium, or if the light vocals were doused in reverb (I’m looking at you Death Cab For Cutie). This feels just right, and half of the songs could be played at the end, or during the breakup scene, of a cute, romantic indie movie, which I’m completely okay with.

“We always know that we’ll wake up, and you’re mine.” — from the song Stupid Things

The sleepy quality of some of the tracks could be enough to overwhelm anyone who is already tired, as I discovered while riding the bus, but on a second listen this album proves that it can engage you if you give it the chance. Part of me wishes I had a special someone with me to hold hands with as we listen to this album. As long as we didn’t listen to the lyrics too hard, because then we might get sad and break up.

That’s the feeling that this album gives you when you listen, and that’s enough to let you smile all the way through it, no matter how you’re feeling behind the smile.

*Tuneage Tuesdays is my weekly album review. I open up my Rdio streaming app and choose the album that is the absolute newest out of the releases on Tuesday. I focus on how the music might make you feel, because that’s really why you listen to music, isn’t it?