Yo La Tengo
Issue #29
I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass (Matador)
By Garin Pirnia
Published: September 1st, 2006 | 12:00am
In Yo La Tengo’s 20-year span as a band, they have always picked provocative album titles — I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One and And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out are just a few prime examples. On I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass, the trio’s first new album in three years, Yo La lets it all loose and marks a return to fuzzy, feedback-drenched music combined with their signature melodic proclivities.
Ten-minute–plus opener “Pass the Hatchet, I Think I’m Goodkind” features gnarling guitars, propulsive syncopated drumbeats, and wild distortion. Following that is “Beanbag Chair,” a stark contrast that integrates piano and horns to form an up-tempo, dulcet track. One of the album’s strongest offerings is “Black Flowers” with the line “You can take what you can get / I forgive but I forget / You never can never sleep enough” building with soaring strings. Segueing back into the feedback with spastic, funky beats and electronic tinges comes “The Room Got Heavy” and, unfortunately, “Watch Out For Me Ronnie” is the most displaced song of punk and rocknroll. Closing I Am Not Afraid of You is “The Story of Yo La Tango,” an elongated song, much like opener “Pass the Hatchet.”
As indie-rock gods, Yo La Tengo certainly knows how to record an album that’s all the best parts of their previous efforts rolled into one. The distorted and sinewy tracks of "Pass the Hatchet," "The Story of Yo La Tengo," and "The Room Got Heavy" mirror the repetitive drones featured on the trio's 1992 May I Sing With Me. The songs border on bursting to life, but not to the extent "Fron a Motel 6" and "I Heard You Looking" do on the exquisite Painful. I Am Not Afraid is a departure from their previous mellow entries of Summer Sun and And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out. "Beanbag Chair" and the stream of conscious "I Feel Like Going Home" try to emotionally resonate like classics "Damage" and "Autumn Sweater" from one of the band's bests, I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One, but the new songs do not quite match the romanticism and poignancy of previous efforts.
Yo La makes music that lulls you to blissful sleep or provokes you to stand up and rock out, and on I Am Not Afraid, the band balances both effects equally well. Yo La isn't doing anything substantially different on this new record, but they are also not allowing themselves to be locked into simply being a melodic and brooding band. This album may not be as heart rendering as And Then Nothing or as electrifying as May I Sing With Me, but the trio finds gratifying elements of previous albums and turn it all into something worthwhile.
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