Yo La Tengo’s second EP in recent months finds them resuming their covers jukebox niche, weaving together selections as unlikely as a 1940s blues oddity and as recognizable as a Bob Dylan classic.
How many Yo La Tengo deep cuts did you enjoy for years before realizing they were covers? If you’ve been a fan for long enough, chances are it’s a few. The trio’s ability to morph into a kind of living covers jukebox is nearly as legendary as their propensity for making non-Jews care about Hanukkah, and if you always thought “You Can Have It All” was an original, you’re not the only one—it’s a testament to the band’s knack for taking any unsung gem and rearranging it until it’s unmistakably a Yo La Tengo song.
Sleepless Night, the band’s second standalone EP of 2020, finds them resuming this curatorial role, weaving together covers as unlikely as a 1940s blues oddity and as recognizable as a Bob Dylan classic alongside one stray original. Unlike the recent ambient workout We Have Amnesia Sometimes, which felt like a time capsule from quarantine, this one is more of an odds-and-sods collection, with recordings stretching back 10 or even 20 years. (The tracks were originally chosen in collaboration with Japanese visual artist Yoshitomo Nara, and previously appeared as part of a limited-edition catalog for his Los Angeles County Museum of Art exhibit.) Yet it never feels patchwork: The tone is reliably lovely and hushed, reflective of Yo La Tengo’s recent instinct for responding to outer turmoil with a heightened commitment to dreamy tranquility.
A little nostalgia, too, is warranted during such destabilizing times; much of Sleepless Night’s tracklist reflects Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley’s 1960s–’70s youth, well before the indie-rock explosion. Guest guitarist (and YLT alum) Dave Schramm nails the jingle-jangle Rickenbacker sound on a surprisingly faithful cover of the Byrds’ “Wasn’t Born to Follow,” a song Kaplan first encountered when his mom took him to see Easy Rider in 1969, while Hubley takes the lead on a sighing, leisurely cover of Ronnie Lane’s 1974 gem "Roll on Babe,” first written by forgotten folk legend Derroll Adams. Meanwhile, the trio’s three-part harmony is the star on “Blues Stay Away,” an excavation of a 1949 Delmore Brothers standard made electric by NRBQ in 1972. Yo La Tengo’s take, recorded in 2011, is more aligned with the song’s downbeat blues origin.
The main attraction, though, is a blissful dream-pop recalibration of Bob Dylan’s “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry.” Recorded for a John Peel radio show, this version is a newly unearthed recording from the And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out era and it shares that album’s gorgeous nocturnal ambience. Hubley replaces Dylan’s straining wheeze with an understated murmur, and her bandmates swap out the “thin, wild mercury sound” of mid-’60s Dylan for a warm, droney hum. It’s a worthy addition to the band’s recurring Dylan obsession, which dates back to 1989’s President Yo La Tengo.
For the most part, though, Sleepless Night feels like an extension of a different record: namely, the band’s 2015 covers-etc. album Stuff Like That There, which itself was a loose sequel to 1990’s similarly spirited Fakebook. As on those releases, the selections are eclectic, the tone is subdued, and there’s not a squalling whammy bar in sight. Only the obligatory new original—a fuzzy and indistinct mood piece called “Bleeding”—feels a bit slight. As for the rest of this 19-minute release, there’s nothing here that particularly surprises or reveals a new side of Yo La Tengo, but there’s nothing that could conceivably disappoint a fan of the group’s jukebox side, either. For most of us, it’s probably the closest we’ll get to a Hanukkah show this year.
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