“We didn’t really set out to make a soothing, relaxing album for sleep time.” That’s Yo La Tengo bassist James McNew reflecting on the process behind their 2018 album There’s a Riot Going On. Intentional or not, it was probably the band’s most consistently tranquil LP in 15 years— even its charged-up song sounded like it was generating electricity for fairy lights. The New Jersey trio often cope with life’s harder moments by turning down and turning inward—it’s a huge part of what makes them so meaningful to so many. McNew might have also been a bit frazzled from having to learn a new software interface to engineer the layered, loop-dense album; remembering what the multi-track to “Above the Sound” looked like, he said, was enough to make him dizzy.
He won’t have that problem when he thinks back on We Have Amnesia Sometimes, which was recorded with a single microphone placed in the middle of the band’s Hoboken practice space. As Ira Kaplan explains, in late April, “with the outside world weighing on everybody,” the band figured out how to safely convene and resume “playing formlessly.” This is how many of their songs have begun over the years, but here, they’ve released the raw material. It’s new territory for them: The key difference between these five gentle drones and the band’s abundant film-scoring or ambient-leaning work, technically speaking, is that those pieces almost always had some lead melody or some syncopated rhythm, however subtle. Here, there are hints of the former on the third and fourth tracks, and the fourth does have the latter, but otherwise, nobody steps out in front or distinguishes themselves clearly.
And that is, generally speaking, the beautiful part of this project. What better time to submit to an exercise in committee and unity than now, when we are quite literally as distanced as ever? On We Have Amnesia Sometimes, Kaplan, McNew, and Georgia Hubley blend into each other and seem to form one big animal. On “James and Ira demonstrate mysticism and some confusion holds (Monday),” the three wade into a shimmering pond of synths and ponder their reflections. On “Georgia thinks it's probably okay (Tuesday),” a storm of feedback rolls in, and by the end there’s a distant pulse, like a washing machine. “Ira searches for the slide, sort of (Friday)” meditates around what sounds like the same organ from “Sudden Organ,” and the light ticking of some down-strumming that the mic picks up becomes its percussion track.
To complement the album’s release, the band performed two ticketed live-stream sets from their practice space, with proceeds going to the Brennan Center for Justice. For a little over half an hour each, they let themselves be filmed while immersed in the process, zoned in on their instruments, pedals, amps, and most of all each other. At one point early in the first set, Hubley leans over in her chair to adjust something, guitar in hand, and on the way up accidentally taps the underside of the crash cymbal next to her with the guitar head. She cracks a smile at the surprise percussion, but it sort of works, so she waits a moment and does it again. It’s indicative of the incredible level of trust and telepathy in that room, which is plenty audible on We Have Amnesia Sometimes. However, the album doesn’t have enough blemishes, stumbles, or flourishes like this to give it extra excitement and curiosity. The risk level stays relatively comfortable; the payoff never really shoots up.
Now in their 29th year with this lineup, ever since McNew stopped a revolving door of some 16 bassists before him, Yo La Tengo are still coming up with new ways to connect with themselves and with their listeners. They picked an appropriate moment for one of their most intimate ideas yet. There is something undeniably comforting, if low-stakes, about hearing them play around with noise, up-close, in the middle of a quarantine-induced drought of human interaction.
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