Yo La Tengo finally gets around to writing Popular Songs
Yo La Tengo. From left: Georgia Hubley, Ira Kaplan, James McNew
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Yo La Tengo has been synonymous with indie rock since the mid-’80s. From its debut, Ride The Tiger, on Coyote Records through its last seven albums on so-called “major indie” Matador Records, the Hoboken, N.J., group has become one of the last bands standing of its generation. Though fellow ubiquitous indie rock stalwarts like Pavement and Guided By Voices have disbanded (until their inevitable reunion tours), Yo La Tengo is still going strong, with cover albums, new studio records, movie soundtracks, and its annual eight-day Hanukkah shows at Maxwell’s in Hoboken helping the band evolve. Recently, Yo La Tengo entered the studio with longtime producer Roger Moutenot, a man who has worked on every one of the group's records since 1993’s Painful, to produce Popular Songs, the band's 12th and latest full-length album. Prior to Yo La Tengo's performance Wednesday at First Avenue, bassist-vocalist James McNew spoke with The A.V. Club about secret covers albums, scoring indie films, and what the band won’t reveal about its music.
The A.V. Club: Earlier this year, you released a “secret” album of cover songs titled Fuckbook under the name Condo Fucks. How did that come about?
James McNew: We’re really bad at secrets. It came about as an accident. There was a bar in Brooklyn that was closing down and having one final show there and some friends were going to play. We wanted to play, too, so we asked if we could open for them. But we didn’t want to bill it as Yo La Tengo because it was their show.... We learned a bunch of cover songs. We were finally able to use the name Condo Fucks, which we came up very long time ago.
AVC: Where did you end up recording the album?
JM: We had a little recording setup in our space [in Hoboken].... I recorded the last Condo Fucks practice before the show; the session was our set. It took about 35 minutes and that was it. We thought it sounded okay and we would probably release it ourselves at some point. Then someone at Matador heard that we had recorded it and wanted to hear it, too. They suggested that they release it. We thought they were nuts. [Laughs.]
AVC: What songs are you covering live now? Anything new?
JM: Probably. We haven’t been focusing on those lately. We’ve mostly been learning how to play our own songs, which I guess you could consider kind of a cover. [Laughs.] That’s what we’ve been working on. I can’t remember the last time we played a cover. I could actually go for that right now. Even if we did [have new covers], I wouldn’t reveal that.
AVC: Why did you record part of Popular Songs album in Nashville?
JM: We recorded almost all of it in our practice space, actually. The producer, Roger Moutenot, has worked with us since Painful, and he lives in Nashville. Ordinarily we will relocate to Nashville to record an album, but this time we asked him to come up to Hoboken, and he moved into our space. It’s largely because of the soundtrack records we have been doing—we do all the recording for that in our space—and we love the sound of our room. We thought this would be a really cool way to try and make the record, just the four of us every day. Ira [Kaplan], Georgia [Hubley], and I were the assistants to Roger, moving mics, wrapping cables—we got our hands dirty. It was great. We are very comfortable here.
AVC: Sounds like it.
JM: I think there’s more pressure in a big studio. It’s so expensive, and every time I mess up, it costs us money. [Laughs.] Also, it becomes, “Where do I park? What am I gonna do tonight? Where am I gonna eat?” The relaxation of being home allowed us to focus on playing and getting sounds. It was a really great experience. Unfortunately there is a garbage truck depot across the street, so when it was time to record vocals, we had to go to Nashville. So only the vocals were done there. [Roger] has his own room there.
AVC: Why is the record called Popular Songs?
JM: We came up with the title very early on. It made us laugh—it was short and funny. At that point the record was nowhere near completed, there were no words to the songs yet. As the album took shape and we got cover art, the title took on a variety of different meanings, and that’s a quality that we always really respond to. When you combine the artwork and the mood and the title of the record you can come up with any number of meanings. I won't tell you which one is the right one.
AVC: Yo La Tengo has recorded music for a slew of movies, some of which ended up on 2008’s They Shoot, We Score compilation album. Are you going to keep going with that?
JM: We’ve done two since then. Since we compiled the record we worked on a film called The Toe Tactic. It was on cable last night and I stumbled across it by accident. There are upwards of 30 music cues that we wrote for that movie. Most recently we did Adventureland.
AVC: Do filmmakers approach you to record music for them, or do you reach out to them?
JM: We haven’t ever lobbied ourselves in hopes to land the next Steven Seagal film. We are doubly lucky that the people that approached us have been people we like. We’re also fortunate that the directors have known a lot about music and are adept at communicating what they want. Ultimately, everyone is working for them—it’s their vision. The first one we did was Junebug, which was directed by Phil Morrison. That was his first movie and our first movie. It was a learning process, especially for us, and especially for me because I’m in charge of all technical stuff. We found out that we would record something for a scene and be “that’s it,” until the director heard it and we would have to change it. We had only ever worked for ourselves before.
AVC: Have you had the problem of having your music cut out of films?
JM: That is part of the job. We’ve had scenes get cut and music go unused, but you have to go along with it and hope that there is an extended director’s cut. A lot of the Junebug stuff didn’t get used. We wound up putting that out on They Shoot, We Score.
AVC: Do you have any more films coming up that you will score?
JM: Not right now. We are going to be spending the next year or so on the road. We won’t have the time to sit down with a project like that for a while, but we look forward to the next one. As we do more and more we find that it’s a fun way to work, and we all look forward to projects that pop up between albums. We’ve really enjoyed making movie music more and more each time.
AVC: You’ve been in the band for almost 20 years now. Do you still write the same way? Has anything changed in the dynamic of the group?
JM: I dunno. I think when I first joined, it was as a temp worker. I was in another group at the time, but we weren’t doing that much. I was the fill in bass player for short tour of America and a short European tour, and my role was just to learn all the YLT songs. We kept playing together after that. I moved [to Hoboken], we learned all of the songs, with no new songs. At first Ira and Georgia wrote a lot of songs, then slowly I found my way in...We just got together just because we could. Play every day and jam or mess around without much of a direction in mind. We started writing songs that way. We would play and hear a sequence and go back and focus on that and make a song out of it. That’s pretty much been our method for the past 15 or 16 years, or I guess lack of method. That’s what we do. It hasn’t changed.
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