Music
YO LA TENGO
I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass
- Issue 8.35
- Wed, August 30, 2006
GENRE | ROCK, ETC.
VERDICT | RECORD STORE CLERKS EXPECTED TO SMILE FOR UP TO 30 SECONDS
LABEL | MATADOR
RELEASE | 9.12.06
YOLATENGO.COM
MATADORRECORDS.COM
The first 11 minutes of I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass are enough to make you take the title seriously—it’s a classic Yo La-splosion of howling feedback, disembodied narration and a bassline like a brand-new engine. It’s a fitting opener for this truly bizarre and addictive record, if only because it makes it crystal fucking clear what band you’re listening to—right before that band disappears. The majority of I Am Not Afraid finds the Yo La’s hopping and straddling genres with appropriate fearlessness; they lapse into orchestral Bacharachian pop complete with fadeouts (“Black Flowers”), exuberant garage (“I Should Have Known Better”), spiraling Suicide-meets-Young Marble Giants drones (“The Room Got Heavy”) and adult-contempo funk falsetto (“Mr. Tough”). The latter, by the way, can be jarringly well-accompanied by a dial tone on speakerphone. Song after song is proof that the long-loved trio are indeed unafraid of what you think, but lest tall skinny devotees get their Hanes in a bunch, be assured that the record’s other bookend is a 12-minute epic of Painful/Electr-O-Pura-era catastrophic bliss that, sure enough, will beat your ass. With the variety of 1990’s Fakebook meeting the Moutenot-enhanced pop power of I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One, it’s hard to imagine anyone who loves Yo La Tengo not blogging their tits off over this.
