You can pick any record from the YLT discography and rejuvenate your Sunday, but this one is really gonna start you on the right foot. Trust.
We have said it before, and we’ll hopefully be saying it again before not too long; Ira Kaplan, Georgia Hubley and James McNew as Yo La Tengo are simply another level. Inimitable and instantly recognisable - which is a strange feat when they rarely sound the same - the singular trio created an album that is as joyous as it is experimental as it is driving as it is funny. It really has it all.
‘I Am Not Afraid Of You…’ is perhaps the furthermost example of their sonic realtime morphing across any of their wonderful records. Originally released in the early autumn of 2006, it falls roughly in the middle of their discography and thirty-nine year career, and weaves together sweet pop balladry, bittersweet minimalism, punk crunch and driving riffs par excellence. It is an album that’s title might be based on a profane exchange between New York Knicks’ Kurt Thomas and team mate Stephon Marbury, and one that spans double length with inspiration and sonic queues from a wide pool of styles, tones and paces. An album of vastness, great imagination, joy and real conviction.
The ten plus minutes of ‘Pass The Hatchet, I Think I'm Goodkind’ might well be one of our very most favourite starts to any album. James’ bass locking instantly into a groove and looping to amazing effect as Georgia shimmers through drum patterns and Ira fills the panorama with winding guitar lines, biting riffs and a superbly fuzzed-out vocal about slide slide sliding down water slides. After ten minutes of Moterik bliss, ‘Beanbag Chair’ is conversely a joyous brass and piano led three minute classic pop nugget. The third cut, ‘I Feel Like Going Home’ introduces Georgia’s vocals for the first time, a beautiful song ending in cinematic grade minimal guitar hums. And next, ‘Mr. Tough’, one of the most exuberant and perfect pop songs, with cowbell pomp, sweet falsetto and more of those amazing brass tones. The following ‘Black Flowers’ is another stunner, a Street Hassle-esque slow builder. Just sublime. And that is very much how the album continues; an album for consumption as an album. The dynamism is wildly impressive, but the consistency and cohesion across the album is to be marvelled at too. A double player pushing eighty minutes, with none of them wasted. A famously restless band, I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass has a little bit of everything that has made them such an essential and evocative listening experience for nearly four decades. There are dramatic arcs and there are stunning highs, but most of all, you can tell that they mean it all.
One heck of an album, this.
The band’s This Stupid World was our 2023 Record of the Year and we had the great pleasure of speaking to Ira Kaplan about it - and naturally record shops too - for issue 27 of Deluxe. You can read that in full here.
