Independent Thinkers

Founding member of the three-piece, Ira Kaplan, doesn't dig on the term 'indie'. 'Independent', yes; 'independence', definitely; but 'indie', not so much. “I think we prize two of those and don't take one of them very seriously at all,” he says down the line from Denver, Colorado. “'Independent' and 'independence' are two things that matter a lot to us, but 'indie' is something that's just... I don't think that really means very much. I don't know that it ever did.”

For the uninitiated to the band's bent pop, their latest album, Fade (2013), is as good a place to start as anywhere. Sonic parallels have forever been drawn between Yo La Tengo and some of the Flying Nun stuff that came out of New Zealand in the late '80s. Yet outside of these comparisons, they've always been difficult to place in the spectrum of things. They're a band that exist in the shadows of pop – just enough rockin' for the party crowds, but weird enough for the nerds – and they're incredibly proud of going their own way.

In some kind of irony, central to their fierce autonomy is the 20-odd year relationship they've had with label Matador. Kaplan explains they were friends with Matador founder Gerard Cosloy long before signing with the label, and that it's a friendship grounded in mutual respect. “In 1993 when we put [sixth album] Painful out we were the new band on the label, we weren't a new band but we were new to the label,” says Kapla. “Now we look around at the acts that they're putting out and we're the old men and women of the label... ”

The respect that the band have for the label extended recently to discussions of what they may do next. Kaplan and his cohorts, wife Georgia Hubley and James McNew, asked Matador what they'd like to see the band do next. “That's one of the advantages of being with a little label who you respect,” says Kaplan. “When there's mutual respect, we are always open to different approaches and different ways of doing things, so as much as our group likes to put our heads in the sand and just do what we do, we wanted to at least think about being receptive to another way of doing things... ”

The Yo La Tengo approach to songwriting hasn't been wearied or altered by time. If anything, Kaplan says, making music's gotten a little easier as their trust in one another and their belief in what they do has grown.

“I'm not sure how we got to be so good at this but we really are good at ignoring our surroundings and pretending that nothing's different. One thing that's gotten easier is that I think we trust each other that much that I think we do believe that if we just relax into it we will do something we like. I think the pressure of previous years – of feeling like something's not working and what do we do – now we accept when something's not working and we just allow things to take the time they take.”