December 23, 1999
If it weren’t for that pesky OK Computer, Yo La Tengo’s I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One would have been the best album of 1997. But even that fabulously addictive record isn’t quite as good as Painful, their shoegazing masterpiece. Painful marks the moment when the husband-and-wife-and-bassist from Hoboken transcended their Velvet Underground and obscure 60’s folk influences to become indie rock’s most revered ambassadors. Here’s why I have hardly gone ten days without playing this album since 1993:
Their soft harmonies would make Brian Wilson weep. Their guitar-abusing is smarter than Sonic Youth. They make the institution of marriage sexy and intriguing. They hang impossibly sweet melodies on thickly strummed guitar and mesmerizing organ drones that have more texture than a shag carpet. With the simplest of chord changes, they break your heart open and pour in gentle wisdom and cacophony in equal measure. The searing, atonal guitar break on “From A Motel 6” is the most invigorating, intelligent use of feedback I’ve ever heard*; its abrupt cut-off a shocking epiphany. Six minutes, three notes and Georgia Hubley’s dulcet, charmingly amateurish voice: “Nowhere Near” is the purest expression of love’s longing since “Pale Blue Eyes.” Truth in advertising – “Sudden Organ” bounds out of the speakers with a bone-rattling Moog that will bring you to your knees in admiration and reverence, changed to fear by the manic soloing to follow. You are comforted by the impossibly tender “A Worrying Thing”, the sweetest folk song The Kinks never wrote, and “The Whole of the Law,” which The Only Ones did. This album exudes a measured, languid beauty that occasionally shakes off its cool melancholy by stomping on the overdrive pedal not only to kiss the sky, but to tear gaping holes in it. Astounding.
As one of my most treasured possessions, this album (or at least, the recommendation thereof) is my Christmas gift to you, dear Reader. Happy Holidays.
- Jared O’Connor
* Except for The Velvet Underground's "What Goes On." Obviously.
languid beauty and cathartic cacophony