Despite achieving limited mainstream success, Yo La Tengo has been called "the quintessential critics' band" and maintain a strong cult following. Additionally, the band is renowned for its encyclopedic repertoire of cover songs both in live performance and on record.
Formation and Early History: 1984–1985
Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley, a husband/wife duo, formed the band in 1984. They chose the name "Yo La Tengo" (Spanish for "I've got it!") in an effort to avoid any connotations in English. The name came from a baseball anecdote. During the 1962 season, New York Mets center fielder Richie Ashburn and Venezuelan shortstop Elio Chacón found themselves colliding in the outfield. When Ashburn went for a catch, he would scream, "I got it! I got it!" only to run into Chacón, who spoke only Spanish. Ashburn learned to yell, "¡Yo la tengo! ¡Yo la tengo!" instead. In a later game, Ashburn happily saw Chacón backing off. He relaxed, positioned himself to catch the ball, and was instead run over by left fielder Frank Thomas, who understood no Spanish and had missed a team meeting that proposed using the words "¡Yo la tengo! as a way to avoid outfield collisions. After getting up, Thomas asked Ashburn, "What the heck is a Yellow Tango?".
They placed an advertisement to recruit other musicians who shared their love for bands such as The Soft Boys, Mission of Burma, and Arthur Lee's Love. The group's debut recording was a 7" single entitled "The River of Water" backed with a cover of Arthur Lee's "A House Is Not a Motel" released in late 1985 with Dave Schramm on lead guitar and Dave Rick on bass. After recording "Private Doberman" for inclusion on a Coyote Records compilation entitled Luxury Condos Coming to Your Neighborhood, Rick left the band and was replaced by Mike Lewis, the founding bass player of Boston garage-punk bands DMZ and Lyres, who was also a member of Brooklyn garage rock band The A-Bones throughout his tenure.
Early Releases: 1986–1989
In 1986, Yo La Tengo released their first LP, Ride the Tiger on Coyote Records. Produced by former Mission of Burma bassist Clint Conley who also took over bass duties on three songs, the album "marked Yo La Tengo as a band with real potential" according to reviewer Mark Deming. Kaplan was credited as "naive guitar" on the sleeve, and in the liner notes for the 1993 reissue of the album on City Slang Records, went so far as to say "Dave's guitar playing is inarguably the best thing about the record."
Schramm and Lewis left the band after the album's release, with Kaplan subsequently taking on the role of lead guitar and Stephan Wichnewski joining to play bass. The group's next album New Wave Hot Dogs (1987) sold poorly, but in the words of Mark Deming, "was a quantum leap over the sound of their debut."
The release of President Yo La Tengo in 1989 did much to establish the band's reputation among rock critics including Robert Christgau who praised the "mysterioso guitar hook" in the first song. Produced by Gene Holder of The dB's, the album was the band's last release on Coyote. Despite the positive reception of the album, sales were still poor and Wichnewski left the band not long after. Hubley and Kaplan carried on as a duo and began playing two-electric-guitar shows. Kaplan, though typically a pragmatist, started carrying a bug trapped in amber in his pocket for luck.
Bar/None and Alias Records: 1990–1992
Yo La Tengo reunited with Dave Schramm in 1990 to record Fakebook, an album of mostly acoustic tunes, including covers of Cat Stevens, Gene Clark, The Kinks, Daniel Johnston, among others, with five original songs by the band themselves. Again produced by Gene Holder, the album's folk sound was a change of pace for the band. Years later, Kaplan recalled that the album was "just me and Georgia looking for an excuse to record with Dave Schramm and Al Greller" who played guitar and double bass on the album, respectively.
In 1991, with Dave Schramm in tow, Yo La Tengo collaborated with Daniel Johnston on the song "Speeding Motorcycle" which was released as a single. The band also released a 7" single on Bar/None Records with the song "Walking Away from You" backed with a cover of Beat Happening's "Cast a Shadow." Gene Holder produced the single and played the bass. The That Is Yo La Tengo EP released later that year included some tracks that would end up on the group's next LP.
After the release of That Is Yo La Tengo, James McNew began playing bass with the band, forming the trio that continues to make up the band today. According to McNew,
“I originally signed on as a fill-in for a short US tour, and a 4-week summer tour of Europe with Eleventh Dream Day. One night after a show in Munster, I was to look after our box of merchandise while Ira and Georgia went gallovanting through the town, meeting their policemen. Needless to say, during our soundcheck in Hamburg the next day, it suddenly dawned on me that I had left the box filled with copies of this EP back at the club in Munster. Oh man, was I in trouble... Sure... blame it on the rookie.”
The band recorded May I Sing with Me in Boston with Holder producing and Lou Giordano engineering. The album was released on Alias Records in 1992. Two of the album's eleven songs ("Swing for Life" and "Five-Cornered Drone") were carried over from the That Is Yo La Tengo EP and feature Holder on bass. The Upside-Down EP was released on CD in support of the album, rounding out the band's releases on Alias.
Early Matador period: 1993–2000
In 1993, Yo La Tengo began their partnership with Matador Records, releasing a 7" and CD5 of the song "Shaker" which the band recorded with John Siket in New Jersey. The following LP, 1993's Painful was also the beginning of the band's fruitful creative partnership with producer Roger Moutenot, who has produced all of their subsequent albums. Painful is the first Yo La Tengo to feature James McNew on every song; Rob Sheffield, writing for Rolling Stone remarked that McNew "became an essential part of the sound on Painful, the 1993 album that kept every promise Yo La Tengo ever made and blew their previous highlights away." Critical reaction was quite positive, with reviewer Stephen Thomas Erlewine calling it "a subtly addicting album." Robert Christgau also praised the group once again, writing in his review that Yo La Tengo is "always friendly. This is not the forbidding experimentation of an aspiring vanguard. This is the fooling around of folks who like to go out on Saturday night and make some noise--and then go home humming it." The band released Electr-O-Pura in 1995 to similar acclaim. For the first time, all songs were credited to the band as a whole rather than individual members; this became the norm for all future releases.
The band's 1997 LP I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One synthesized the group's eclectic combination of folk, punk rock, shoegazing, long instrumental noise-jams, and electronic music into a sprawling, multi-faceted style. Critical reaction was extremely positive; Pitchfork Media awarded the album a 9.7 out of 10 and reviewer Stephen Thomas Erlewine wrote that it was "arguably Yo La Tengo's finest and most coherent album to date." Kaplan recalled a turning point in the band's musical progression:
“I think after Electr–O-Pura we’ve had a direction of trying not to worry too hard about what the next album is going to sound like. Everything we’ve ever played on we just do whatever seems right at the moment, we just write a bunch of songs, and then go one baby step at the time and just do what seems right.”
With their critical reputation higher than ever before, the band toured extensively and their fan base continued to grow. In 1998, they collaborated with Jad Fair and released the album Strange But True to mixed reviews. The band entered the studio again in late 1999 to record their ninth LP. And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out was released in February 2000 to a warm reception.
Continued Acclaim and Soundtrack Work: 2001–Present
In 2001, Yo La Tengo recorded an instrumental score for eight short undersea documentaries by Jean Painlevé, entitled The Sounds of the Sounds of Science. The program debuted at the San Francisco Film Festival and has been performed live approximately twelve times. The band also released an EP with covers of Sun Ra's "Nuclear War" in late 2002.
The band's tenth LP, Summer Sun, was released in 2003. Although the album received generally favorable reviews, some critics found the album's quiet atmosphere "underwhelming." Others criticized the band for a perceived lack of invention. When asked about the album's quiet nature, Kaplan stated,
“We made a decision at the last second just to leave the loud songs off. We were looking at the material we recorded and just trying to put out the best record that we could. At a certain point, we just thought it seemed right to put out the quiet ones. I've been aware that there's been some surprise about that and people saying it's even quieter than the last record, which has sort of taken me by surprise."
Yo La Tengo collaborated with Yoko Ono on the 2003 charity album Wig in a Box: Songs from and Inspired by Hedwig and the Angry Inch in support of the Harvey Milk High School. The band put together their first "best of" compilation entitled Prisoners of Love: A Smattering of Scintillating Senescent Songs: 1985–2003 which was released in 2005. They composed scores for four more films: 2005's Junebug and Game 6, and 2006's Shortbus and Old Joy. Their scores for these four films were collected on the 2008 compilation They Shoot, We Score.
Their eleventh LP, I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass, was released in 2006 to universal acclaim. Informed by their soundtrack work, the arrangements included more strings and horns than any of the band's previous albums. Kaplan told an interviewer: "I think we gained an element of comfort with using that kind of instrumentation, and it became something we could draw on for our other songs." In addition, the album was book-ended with two guitar jams lasting over ten minutes each.
In 2006, the band released Yo La Tengo Is Murdering the Classics, a compilation of their live impromptu cover-song performances on the New Jersey freeform radio station, WFMU. As part of the station's annual fundraising marathon, listeners who call in to pledge money to the station may request a favorite which the band will then perform on the spot. In late 2007, the band began performing acoustically for "The Freewheelin' Yo La Tengo" tour. Audiences were encouraged to request songs and ask questions which, Kaplan stated, the band tried to answer "in a strategic manner so that the answers to the questions will lead to the next song."
In March 2008, Yo La Tengo performed under the alias "Condo Fucks" at Brooklyn's Magnetic Field. As Condo Fucks, the band released an album of cover songs, Fuckbook, on Matador in March, 2009. On June 4, Matador announced a new Yo La Tengo album called Popular Songs. Yo La Tengo is also contributing to a tribute album for New Zealand rock and roll musician Chris Knox who suffered a stroke in June 2009. All proceeds from the album will go towards Knox's recovery.
Periodically Double or Triple
Yo La Tengo Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Seems a little too long
Never used the hammer
Without somehow using it wrong
Ive got time on my hands
That I cant wash off
I'm cruising
I cant shake this car
They often do
I'm seeing double and triple
Does this ever happen to you?
I don't have to make it rain
But I never argue a proven review
Never wear a helmet
when I'm riding a bike
Never recall a face
to me they all look alike
Ive got a hole in my brain
where what I meant to say lives
I'm live in the past
And give back gifts and gifts
Walls are closing in
They often do
I'm seeing double and triple
Does this ever happen to you?
I don't have to make it rain
But I never argue with a proven view
Sometimes in the future tense
I hope that you were safer
Put up an electric fence
Then only then
We can all get along
Get it down in writing
Judge Judy tell me if I'm wrong
Walls are closing in
They often do
I'm seeing double and triple
Does this ever happen to you?
I don't have to make it rain
But I never argue with a proven view
The lyrics to Yo La Tengo's "Periodically Double or Triple" are introspective and self-analytical. The singer reflects on their own quirks and habits, admitting to some faults while defending others. The opening lines, "Never read Proust / Seems a little too long," suggest a sense of impatience and perhaps insecurity about not being well-read. The line "Never used the hammer without somehow using it wrong" conveys a similar sense of insecurity about one's own abilities.
The singer also expresses a sense of being stuck in a rut or routine, unable to break free from the monotony of everyday life. The repetition of the phrase "I'm cruising" suggests a lack of direction or purpose, and the line "I've got time on my hands / That I can't wash off" implies a sense of restlessness or an inability to escape one's own thoughts. The reference to "seeing double and triple" could be interpreted as a metaphor for feeling overwhelmed or confused, perhaps due to stress or anxiety.
The later verses introduce some more specific details about the singer's personality and behavior. For example, the lines "Never wear a helmet / When I'm riding a bike" suggest a sense of recklessness or disregard for personal safety. The mention of having "a hole in my brain / Where what I meant to say lives" suggests an insecurity about one's ability to communicate effectively. The final lines of the song, "I don't have to make it rain / But I never argue with a proven view," suggest a sense of pragmatism and a willingness to accept advice or guidance from others.
Overall, "Periodically Double or Triple" is a thoughtful meditation on the quirks and insecurities that make us human. Through its introspective lyrics, the song encourages listeners to reflect on their own behaviors and attitudes, acknowledging both the positive and negative aspects of their personalities.
Line by Line Meaning
Never read Proust
I have never read Marcel Proust's works, most likely because they are too long.
Seems a little too long
Proust's writings are widely known for their length, which could be the reason for my reluctance to read them.
Never used the hammer
I have never used a hammer effectively without doing something wrong or making a mistake.
Without somehow using it wrong
It is difficult for me to use a hammer without making some kind of mistake or error.
Ive got time on my hands
I don't have many things to occupy my time at the moment.
That I cant wash off
My free time is not easily disposable, and it feels like it is a permanent fixture in my daily life.
I'm cruising
I am currently coasting along in my life without any distinct direction or goal.
I cant shake this car
I am unable to rid myself of a feeling of unease or discomfort.
Walls are closing in
I am feeling overwhelmed or restricted by the various pressures and circumstances around me.
They often do
Feeling boxed in or claustrophobic is a common experience for many people.
I'm seeing double and triple
I am experiencing multiple versions or interpretations of reality, which could be a result of stress or anxiety.
Does this ever happen to you?
I am curious if anyone else experiences similar feelings or sensations in their lives.
I don't have to make it rain
I do not have the power to create or manipulate the world around me in any significant way.
But I never argue a proven review
I do not argue with a conclusion or opinion that has already been supported by evidence or proof.
Never wear a helmet
When I ride a bike, I never wear a helmet as a safety measure.
when I'm riding a bike
The context specific to my statement about helmets being only relevant when I am on my bike.
Never recall a face
I have difficulty remembering or recognizing people's faces because they all seem to look alike to me.
to me they all look alike
Across all individuals, people's facial features are indistinguishable from each other in my perception.
Ive got a hole in my brain
There is an area in my brain where my intended thoughts or ideas are lost or miscommunicated.
where what I meant to say lives
Instead of my intended words coming out, what I originally wanted to convey is retained in this specific area of my brain.
I'm live in the past
My mind is preoccupied with events or memories from previous times in my life, and I struggle to move forward from them.
And give back gifts and gifts
I constantly return presents or presents, indicating regret or dissatisfaction with what I have been given.
Sometimes in the future tense
At times, I ponder future possibilities and wonder what could happen in hypothetical situations.
I hope that you were safer
I wish for you to be out of harm's way in the future scenarios that I have envisioned.
Put up an electric fence
A possible way to ensure safety in the future might be through installing an electrical barrier.
Then only then
Only after the installation of the electric fence could the hypothetical situations become a reality.
We can all get along
With adequate safety measures in place, people may be able to coexist peacefully in the future scenarios I have considered.
Get it down in writing
To ensure a clear understanding of the safety measures and expectations, it may be useful to record them in written form.
Judge Judy tell me if I'm wrong
Even with written agreements, there may still be disputes, and it may be necessary to resolve them in a court of law like Judge Judy's.
Lyrics © O/B/O APRA/AMCOS
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
MJ
Accidentally, A LOT of this song works with the pandemic lockdown.....what a great song!
a visual device
You're so right! Lyrically it's almost perfectly appropriate for the pandemic lol. Plus the prescient renewal of Sly's title with their last album. Geniuses!
Christopher
OMGSH, that pineapple looks so good! Such a groovy song though. I mean 20 years and Yo La Tengo are releasing stuff like this still? I will never tire of them.
AltBren
Such great lyrics.. "I've got time on my hands, i can't wash off"..
Tania Castro
Sigue siendo mi favorita en 2017!!!
Oscar Torres
Está muy chida,chidisima!!!!
ashtrayband
oh what a wonderful song, lots of juices!!!
Hillbilly Jack
I'm simultaneously hungry for fruit and nauseated by it.
Mr Controversy
Double tripple ALL THE WAY!!!!
Jake Capouch
Finally someone says it! Who's to say plants aren't conscious! But fruits are MEANT to be eaten. The only TRULY moral diet! B\