Yo La Tengo Announce Headline Dublin Show
3Olympia Theatre
10th April 2023
TICKETS
Tickets from €31.40 Incl. booking fee
Doors 7pm
New Jersey Indie-rock outfit Yo La Tengo have today announced details of their upcoming EU/UK tour, which includes a fully seated show in Dublin’s 3Olympia Theatre on 10th April 2023. The band have also announced details of their forthcoming sixteenth studio album This Stupid World on 10th February 2023 via Matador Records.
Time keeps moving and things keep changing, but that doesn’t mean we can't fightback. Yo La Tengo have raced time for nearly four decades and, to my ears, they just keep winning. The trio’s latest victory is called This Stupid World, a spellbinding set of reflective songs that resist the ticking clock. This music is not so much timeless as time-defiant. “I want to fall out of time,” Ira Kaplan sings in “Fallout.” “Reach back, unwind.”
Part of how Kaplan, Georgia Hubley, and James McNew escape time is by watching it pass, even accepting it when they must. “I see clearly how it ends / I see the moon rise as the sun descends,” they sing during opener “Sinatra Drive Breakdown.” In the séance-like "Until it Happens,” Kaplan plainly intones, “Prepare to die / Prepare yourself while there’s still time.” But This Stupid World is also filled with calls to reject time–bide it, ignore it, waste it. "Stay alive," he adds later in the same song. "Look away from the hands of time.”
Of course, times have changed for Yo La Tengo as much as they have for everyone else. In the past, the band has often worked with outside producers and mixers. They made This Stupid World all by themselves. And their time-tested judgment is both sturdy enough to keep things to the band’s high standards, and nimble enough to make things new.
This Stupid World gives your brain a lot to digest, too. All the battles with time drive toward some heavy conclusions. In the gripping “Aselestine,” Hubley sings about what sounds like a friend on death's door: “The clock won’t tick / I can’t predict / I can’t sell your books, though you asked me to.” In “Apology Letter,” time turns simple communication into something fraught and confusing: "The words / Derail on the way from me to you.” Not everything is so serious, though. The absurdist “Tonight’s Episode "helps McNew learn to milk cows, steal faces, and treat guacamole as a verb. And somehow Alice Cooper, Ray Davies, and Rick Moran is show up in “Brain Capers,” all telling us time isn’t finished yet.
So I guess everyone on This Stupid World grapples with how time keeps steam rolling and how we keep trying to do something about it. It’s there in the title, a weary but clear-eyed pejorative that suggests determined resignation, a will to fight despite the grim odds. It’s there in the title track too: “This stupid world–it’s killing me / This stupid world–is all we have.” Such realism leads to the resolute optimism of This Stupid World’s parting shot, “Miles Away,” which sees time’s passage and life's impermanence as things to deal with rather than reasons to despair. “You feel alone / Friends are all gone," Hubley prays softly. "Keep wiping the dust from your eyes.”
Ira’s ‘Personal Best’ interview with The Line Of Best Fit, talking through five songs from across the band’s catalogue is now live, and is a must read!
The songs:
1. The Evil That Men Do - Ride the Tiger / President Yo La Tengo
2. Ultra-Powerful Short Wave Radio Picks Up Music From Venus (Jad Fair & Yo La Tengo) / False Alarm - Genius + Love = Yo La Tengo / Electr-o-pura
3. Looney Tunes - Sugarcube CD
4. Ohm - Fade
5. Here You Are - There’s a Riot Going On
Connect with Yo La Tengo
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