The Long Tango

"History is written by the victors,” a wise man once said. Winston Churchill is the most authoritive speculated source of the quote, and he should know; he wrote a lot of history. Either way, it's been accepted as true fact by society. You win, and history is yours to shape. But how often do you see that happening? Given that you've picked up this magazine, you would be aware of the often fickle nature of music history; how one thing might be celebrated one day, and deplored the next. Keeping one eye on the past is always going to be a big point in the world of music, and the three fine members of Yo La Tengo, so associated with the underground scene as they are, know this better than anyone.

Drum talks to one third of the band in James McNew, right off the bat discussing the tour plans for their new album, Fade. “Ah, pretty good,” the drummer states with a contemplative sigh, before launching into a schedule that would not surprise anyone who knew anything about Yo La Tengo. “Today was a day off on tour, we actually just started touring this week. We played five shows, and today was our first day off. We started the tour in North Carolina, and worked our way down south to Atlanta, over to Burmingham, Alabama and now we have a day off in Louisville, Kentucky. We'll be playing here tomorrow. And then we go back north through the Midwest into Canada, and then back down through New England, and we finish in New York.”

McNew sounds genuinely excited about the tour, despite the fact that it's a process that they've taken on umpteen times before. It's understandable excitement, though; in just a few weeks, Fade – produced, for the first time for Yo La Tengo, by Tortoise's John McEntire – has already swept across the tastemaking publications of our time, and has floored everyone. It's nothing anyone was expecting; a set of lo-fi, intricately gentle songs which almost invoke calmness. It's success is despite our current quick-click, on-demand rapid societal nature. “We're really pleasantly surprised,” McNew says when asked about their perception of the album's success. “People have seemed to react to it very strongly. It's really exciting for us. It seems like a lot of people are finding out about us for the first time, which is great, considering we've been around for so long. I really love that. That makes me so excited, to think that we're a 'hot new band' or something.”

McNew admits in passing that Fade has provided the three-piece with an experience they haven't really encountered before: being popular. The album's success has been quick and encompassing, not exactly like the slow-burn cult status of previous releases. “Well, I think it's just because we weren't that popular, I don't know,” he responds to why he feels so different this time around. “I guess different people are curious about music to different degrees, and lord knows I'm still getting around to music that I missed somehow. So it's certainly nothing I could ever fault anybody for; I think it's just the way being a music fan goes. As much as you or I consider ourselves to be knowledgeable about music, and really passionate about what we like, there's still so many things that we haven't heard yet. We'll hear it eventually, but just some sooner than later. There's always something new to discover from 30 or 40 years ago. And that's always an exciting concept; you don't really wanna have heard everything already. There's always something new on the horizon, even if it isn't actually new, and that really keeps you excited about music. So, yes. There's much work to be done.”

“For the most part, I've always felt like I've spent more time with music from the past,” McNew admits. “I grew up that way, I grew up as a little kid listening to my parent's old records. I don't know, maybe that sort of subconsciously stuck with me. And I guess as a band, we just became used to fueling our music through those memories. We're still listening to all different kinds of music, new and old, but we kind of got into that process of working our own way from the start, and that's how it's always been. We do it different.”

That's a statement that you could surely pick up from Yo La Tengo's lives shows. Ira Kaplan has stated before that he would “go crazy” if they had to abide by the stock-standard touring schedule, and McNew admits that in a typical Yo La Tengo set, “the setlist is written just before the show, and we go in knowning what we're gonna play, but that will always change.”

Which leads onto a topic that's very important, at least to this scribe: Tim & Eric, Awesome Show, Great Job! The band got involved with the comedy duo after meeting them through mutual friends – comedians like Todd Barry and Patton Oswalt, who had performed at Yo La Tengo's famous Hannukah gigs – and hit it off. “Oh we're all huge fans,” McNew admits. “I don't know, there's something just so… different about them. They don't play by the rules. It's just like with things like Monty Python and then Mr Show and stuff, they deliberately tried to break the rules of comedy. And Tim & Eric just seems to be the evolution of that.” So, given Yo La Tengo's penchant for off-the-wall live experiences, and Tim Heidecker's known music clip work, could there possibly be some collaboration in the future? “I don't know why we haven't done anything with those guys yet. But if we did, I think it might just be the best thing we've ever done, or anyone's ever done.”

Fade is out now.