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Yo La Tengo - Summer Sun Audio CD

A fair review of the Yo La Tengo "Summer Sun" Audio CD. Please note that the below review is the views of the authors, and authors only. You can get a complete list of all Yo La Tengo reviews here, or go back to the Yo La Tengo tabs.

Yo La Tengo Band: Yo La Tengo
Title: Summer Sun
Rating:
Release Date: 2003-04-08
Media: Audio CD

Tracks: 1: Beach Party Tonight 2: Little Eyes 3: Nothing But You and Me 4: Season of the Shark 5: Today Is the Day 6: Tiny Birds 7: How to Make a Baby Elephant Float 8: Georgia Vs. Yo la Tengo 9: Don't Have to Be So Sad 10: Winter A-Go-Go 11: Moonrock Mambo 12: Let's Be Still 13: Take Care

Great mellow atmospheric soundscape
I got it when I was painting my kitchen and was seeped in paint fumes. I love this album. Listened to it over and over again. It created a whole new soundscape in my head. This was my first YLT album, so I had the pleasure of just enjoying it without having to compare it to their other albums. It's mellow. Great make-out music. What more could you ask for???.


Cooled off.
And like its predecessor, And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out, there's little on "Summer Sun" to dislike, but again like its predecessor, there's little that catches my attention. "Summer Sun" was the second album by Yo La Tengo finding them exploring a much more cooled off direction, trading the noise and feedback that decorated their previous records for quiet riffs, gentle vocals, and swirling sounds.

The album pretty much moves from one downtempo, quiet number ("Today is the Day") to another ("Don't Have to Be So Sad") and while there's the occasional standout (the absolutely lovely "Little Eyes" comes to mind), by and large there's a bit too much of a sameness for me. There's a few exceptions (funky piano and wah guitar workout "Georgia vs. Yo La Tengo"), but by and large, "Summer Sun" doesn't do much to catch my attention.

Truth to be told, if I didn't know what came next when I wrote this, I'd be talking about how Yo La Tengo had gotten old. A lot of folks really like this stuff, but I find "Summer Sun" to be missing the fire of their earlier records.


Spacey, diverse, mellow alt-rock
Nevertheless, the breezy nature of the material serves the theme well, and all fans who seem disappointed in the face of greater, subtly intense musical statements on other records must step back and realize this is still an accomplished effort from a solid unit. 3 1/2 stars

Focused, even in it's apparent lo-fi laziness of summer sloth, there are plenty of beautiful, soft ideas flourishing about, although many might not have been brought to complete fruition. The cheerful moods of the sun in summer are translated, distorted, and satirized all in an easy to digest format of pseudosunsoaked fun. For all it's simplicity, the production values imbue even the slightest melodic experiment with a tonal depth that gives more replay value then your typical straightforward alternative rock, which is one of the key ingredients that has helped separate this band from countless imitators. .


The Best Album of 2003
Then, take the opening ambient hymn (or prayer?) Beach Party Tonight, with its almost meditational refrain of "I'm on my knees"; the pop-trance ditty How To Make A Baby Elephant Float, with its gentle and delicately bouncing melodies hopscotching between piano and flute solos; and the jaw-droppingly rapturous, elegaic, hypnotic quasi-tribal free-jazz 10-minute magnum opus Let's Be Still - and you have not just the very best work of Yo La Tengo's entire career, but some of the most astonishingly beautiful music ever made anywhere, by anyone. Say you had to discover what Yo La Tengo's Summer Sun LP is all about on the basis of three songs only.

Even without these three alt-pop masterpieces, the remainder of the album is certainly as good as anything found off YLT's 2000 LP And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out (the gorgeous closing track of which, Night Falls On Hoboken, hinted at the lush and delicate splendor to be achieved in the sessions to come). Summer Sun may not contain anything as immediately hooky or catchy as Let's Save Tony Orlando's House or You Can Have It All from And Then Nothing, but it's far more beautiful and revelatory upon successive listens. In particular, Little Eyes is a rousing (yet cleverly subdued) folk-rock number; Don't Have To Be So Sad is a hypnotic lover's prayer spoken-sung over a pitter-pattering drum machine, piano and bass; and drummer Georgina Hubley's purely longing, utterly affectless and yet completely enchanting vocal turns on ballads Today Is The Day and album closer Take Care make me wish that she took over lead vocals much more often. Note to YLT fans - by all means please seek out the rarities Dreaming and Magnet off the bonus third disc of the trio's latest Prisoners Of Love best-of compilation to hear more of Hubley's thoroughly unpretentious yet exquisite singing - if only these two songs had replaced some of the less remarkable filler on Summer Sun, we might be talking about one of the best albums ever made. As is, the best album of 2003 and one of the very finest musical offerings halfway through our current decade is certainly nothing to scoff at.

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Finally - A Summer Album You can kill Yourself To
C. It's the album I've spent my whole life waiting for - a summer soundtrack the O. wouldn't touch with a barge pole (that's a large stick for the nautically uninitiated) and that you can slash your wrists to. No, I kid you people. But the cdnow. com precis was spot on - this is the summer album for goths, nerds, geeks, tweakers, stoners, sniffy-sniffers, mods, teddy-boys, grungers, yokels, techno-bots and anyone else who is genuinely disturbed by the beach and its associated rituals. Lock yourself in your room, ignore the glorious sunshine outside and prepare for the end of days (it's revelations people!).


You can see a complete list of all Yo La Tengo discography, or go back to the Yo La Tengo tabs. There is also a good guide on how to read guitar tabs here.

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