Hip hop
Independent music heavyweights Yo La Tengo demonstrate once again how to master the art of album delivery, with authenticity, knowledge and creativity.
With a remarkable career that has lasted close to forty years, twenty-seven records on, the Hoboken, New Jersey group find themselves at complete ease with being who they are, writing and recording the exact music they want to make.
This album is louder, yet it seems to carry itself with calm authority. Retaining complete artistic control is half the battle, but there is more to it than that. Having the freedom and space to write and record is key, and ‘This Stupid World’ is an imaginative result of a lengthy, expansive process of work. Testing the band members’ strength to the full, there was enough time to let loose and set their musical instincts free to lead the way.
Keen to get a little peak behind the scenes, Clash caught up with vocalist and guitarist Ira Kaplan for some rare insight, and the songwriter was up for spilling some of the beans. They have no single way of writing new song material and the importance of being present in the moment.
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A band who have been around for as long as Yo la Tengo must have a different way of making music, how do songs become songs in your writing space?
Our process doesn’t change that dramatically, the results do, but the process is flexible enough to allow for different things to happen, we just get together and start playing. James does a lot of recording for us. When we’re playing music, when we’re not aimlessly playing music or pretending to aimlessly play, in the back of our heads, there’s always the hope that something will come out, if it doesn’t, that’s okay.
I have a feeling there’s some things that came about after the initial process, as it happened gradually. I don’t always end up remembering it, and James and Georgia might have had stronger, more specific recollections.
But we ended up with these nine pieces that we were singing to, and in some cases, edited to change the structure to make a structure that work better for us, and just slowly start zooming in on a song and then zooming in on a record with those songs.
So how would you describe the pace or rhythm of the recording process?
This is the first record, which we recorded and mixed ourselves – I really mean James. We may not go into a recording studio for a few weeks, we have the freedom to bounce around and work on something for a while, before switching to another song and switch back. If you’re in a recording studio you’re watching the studio bill go up every minute you’re there. There’s a tendency to want to work more efficiently, we don’t have to work efficiently, we’re there, paying for the rehearsal space, no matter what the economics of it are, which makes it easier to follow our brains rather than just finish things because we have to.
At which point or how did you realise a song was complete or as good as you wanted it to be?
This is one of the main challenges of recording the record the way we did because. To go back to recording studio example, when your time is up in the studio, you might be done. You can always go back and put more time in, but there’s that tendency to think of that as your deadline, we didn’t have a firm deadline, we just kept tinkering and tinkering.
What happens is that one person will think we’re done, then someone else agrees. Eventually, we just all look at each other and think maybe we’re done, maybe we’re not, but that’s what I’m talking about, you can put it aside, come and see how you feel about it tomorrow, listen to it at home, see if it’s still working.
Because of the intense aspect, especially in mixing where you’re just listening so intently. It’s pretty revelatory sometimes to get away from it, and just listen the next day with fresh ears, something that seemed good the day before may not seem good again and vice versa. Eventually, the three of us all agree that we’re done, and we deliver it to Matador.
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The decision to self-produce and self-mix, was that a matter of reaching a certain point in your career and realising the time was right?
The decision was made halfway through making the record, as on the last studio record ‘There’s A Riot Going On’. We were recording ourselves with the idea that we would take those tracks to a recording studio, presumably work with John McIntyre again, rerecord a bunch of things, we thought we were creating a template for a future recording session. At a certain point, we looked at each other thinking, maybe this is the record, we don’t need to go to a studio, and with this record it was a similar thing.
We thought we’re going to record this, we’ll probably go and mix with John to get another perspective. But as we were doing rough mixes, you’re always listening to the tracks, how they fit in with each other. We were putting so much attention into those mixes, liking what we heard, and way into the process, we just thought maybe this is actually it. It wasn’t so much a decision we made as recognising what we were doing without thinking about it.
There’s an aspect of having worked together for so long, worked increasingly well together that we felt competent, we have the ability to come to a consensus without someone’s help. Whether they call it binding arbitration. When we disagreed, we were able to resolve those differences without a referee.
There’s the theme of time, you tackle the idea of trying to resist the ticking clock.
We have reached an age where the clock is not really our friend. Unlike the Rolling Stones, and Irma Thomas, time is not on our side. Tom Verlaine left us; time is a constant, unfortunate reminder. It’s not like we sat down to work out our feelings about this on a new record, but when the time comes to write lyrics, which is invariably, the final piece of any given song, it’s what we find in our brain.
It’s not the part of writing that any of us enjoy the most, but it’s about thoughts on life. Mostly, as just a strategy, I don’t want to know too much about other records, I want to just come to them and project my own thoughts on them. Sometimes, when you know too much about something, it can change your engagement with it, because you’re conditioned to know something.
You spoke about the difference of being in a recording studio and the rehearsal space, the limitations that can create. Does that pressure compromise or hinder creativity?
I’d say yes, although I don’t think we necessarily need we go long periods of time without albums coming out. We’re content to play something, even if it doesn’t end up going anywhere, we know we played music. In a certain sense, if creativity is literally the act of creation, then yes. If it’s creativity, which frequently is like a synonym for creating something good, then I don’t know if we’re that creative.
But it’s very easy for us to just begin playing. It’s something else that we’ve improved over time, not feeling the pressure to get this job done or get that job done, we just let the process take its time, and if we go three or four more years without a new record, that’s just what’s going to happen. I was focusing before on the idea of time, the aspect to which time is not our friend, but to not be afraid of the ticking of the clock. We’re good at that too, we just do what we do.
The stable relationship you seem to enjoy with your record label creates some piece of mind. How do you feel your own musicianship has evolved over time?
I try to do things that I don’t think I’ve done before, but it’s hard to say that. Like a lot of people in my particular walk of life, maybe this is being defensive, there’s a suspicion that I have a certain technical excellence that I don’t have, and will never have.
In 1997 we recorded our album ‘I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One’. There was a song ‘Moby Octopad’, it was created in the studio, we had an idea for it that we brought in and just fleshed it out while we were recording it. There was one part of the song, an instrumental break where, without talking about it, everyone knew I was going to play noisy feedback, a guitar solo. But we agreed that the fact that everyone knew it was coming meant we should not do that, we should do something else. You want it to have an impact.
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That sounds like an inventive way to measure things, it sets the bar high.
If you can hear it in your head before it’s happening, you’ve already gotten derailed. We came up with this weird, chromatic piano part, which was as startling as we hoped the feedback part would have been, but wasn’t. So along those lines, that’s always pointed me to the approach, the easiest, funniest thing is to step on a fuzz box, let the guitar play itself, but to try to save those moments for when that’s what the song wants, not because it’s what I do. So from my point of view I try to be more expansive in the choices and directions I take.
Speaking of the guitar, tell me about some of guitarists or other musicians that inspire you.
I can tell you about guitar players that I love. Tom Verlaine, I remember watching Television, and watching him play solo. I particularly enjoyed seeing Television, just so magical and transcendent. Richard Lloyd, those shows at CBGBs were just remarkable, and the way they played together. Richard Thompson, The Incredible String Band are just so good. Somebody I don’t bring up but I love is The Sun Ra Arkestra, who continue to be a remarkable band under Marshall Allen, who’s 98 years old leading that band and their guitar player Dave Hotep.
There’s so many people on stage and you’re hearing the sound from the ensemble, not many do that. The beautiful, complementary sounds Dave makes, he’s a really special guitar player. I also like Bill Frisell, we got to do one of our Hanukkah shows where Phil Cohran sat in with us and hearing him playing with us I could go on for hours.
What’s it like to be in a band with the person you’re married to? Also curious about the overall chemistry within the band?
It’s the only thing I know, so I have nothing to compare it to, but it’s great. Otherwise, we probably wouldn’t have lasted this long, the marriage or the band. There’s always the moments after, not every day of work is a great day at work, there are times you wish you could just come back to the person you care most about, Georgia can’t do that, I can’t do that.
It’s the rapport that the three of us have, there are many bands that thrive on conflict and competition within bands, we’re not that kind of group, and that springs from the married couple at its core and we try to get along. We try to be better than the sum of our parts, it’s as much of a challenge for James as it is for us, we’ve been doing it for so long, we genuinely don’t think about it at all.
It becomes a quintessential part of life, you no longer think about it. It just is and continues to be.
That’s another thing that I feel like I’ve consciously stopped to the extent that I ever did think that way. If you set your sights on something, you get it, you find out it wasn’t as great as you thought it was going to be, or you don’t get it, and feel that you failed. Both those things can blind you to what’s happening around you.
Rather than define ourselves by what we’re hoping for the future, we’re really good at appreciating the present and being receptive to the amazing things that are happening without worrying about what’s not happening, or what will happen even.
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‘This Stupid World’ is out now.
Words: Susan Hansen
Photo Credit: Cheryl Dunn
