HOBOKEN, N.J., Dec. 5 — When Yo La Tengo plays covers of ’60s and ’70s rock songs, the members of the band almost take the meanness and grubbiness out of record fetishism: The way they feel about old or obscure or outer-edges rock ’n’ roll comes through with affection, generosity, positive energy, even safety. They are not testing you.
Yo La Tengo isn’t a cover band. But even when its musicians, Ira Kaplan, Georgia Hubley and James McNew, aren’t playing straight covers, much of what they do — song structures, guitar solos, lyrics — points arrows toward the things they love.
On Wednesday those things included Gary U.S. Bonds (a Hanukkah adjustment to “Seven-Day Weekend,” using the number eight instead), Gary Lewis and the Playboys (“This Diamond Ring”), the Ramones (two versions of “Blitzkrieg Bop,” one in surf-instrumental mode), T. Rex (“Solid Gold, Easy Action”), the ’60s garage band the Dovers (“What Am I Going to Do?”) and the wriggling, gestural, feedback-laden guitar solos that Lou Reed played with the Velvet Underground, which have given Mr. Kaplan 20 years of life force.
They turn their fandom into originality, and finally into a kind of charity. Yo La Tengo’s Hanukkah shows, a nearly annual traditional at Maxwell’s here — hometown to Mr. Kaplan and Ms. Hubley — are fund-raisers for some of their favorite causes.
These are deceptively casual gigs. Wednesday was the second night of “Yo La Tengo and Their Heavy Friends,” as the shows are advertised. ( This was a reference to “Lord Sutch and Heavy Friends,” a 1970 album by Screaming Lord Sutch, but you knew that, right?) The proceeds went, in part, to the Stone, John Zorn’s nonprofit performance space on the Lower East Side.
The guests were the English comedian John Oliver, a cast member on “The Daily Show With John Stewart,” currently on hiatus because of the writers’ strike, and the New Zealand band the Clean. Encores included members of the Clean, as well as Mac McCaughan of the band Superchunk.
Yo La Tengo knows how to make music that’s inherently sentimental and close to the vest, whether whispering or screaming. Wednesday’s set had intimate songs with a keyboard (“Nowhere Near”), sweet guitar pop (“Beanbag Chair”) and built-to-last rock songs (“Deeper Into Movies,” “Upside Down”). But it also had heavy-gauge freakouts, which seemed just as careful and mindful.
After 23 years this band can pace a show brilliantly; the 90-minute set started with a soft, wordless instrumental and ended with the Beach Boys song “Little Honda,” a “Roll Over Beethoven”-style three-chord wonder fitted with a long and lavish insurrection of feedback in the middle. (Every member, even Ms. Hubley, the drummer, made violent noise on guitar for five minutes.) But then, smoothly and by degrees, they all returned to the verse of the song, and brought it home with precision.
