Live Review: Yo La Tengo, Keep On Dancin's

A short set from Keep On Dancin's starts off the night. It's been a while since this reviewer has seen this band gracing stages – and a reminder of how much they have been missed. They finish with Grey Ghost – Jacinta Walker as impassioned as ever. The arrival of new album Hunter cannot come out soon enough.

Tonight though is all about two halves – the quiet and the loud sides of Yo La Tengo. The quiet set starts off with the excellent Ohm in acoustic mode, a hushed motoric lull with wondrous harmonies between Ira Kaplan and James McNew, Georgia Hubley's drum kit set at the front alongside them. Cornelia And Jane and Black Flowers are particular highlights in this tempered set, a studied meditation in finding the space and patience within these considered songs. Nevertheless it does feel too muted at times, and when the set is finished to wondrous applause, it's also something of a relief that there is catharsis to follow.

And follow it does – Yo La Tengo return to the stage with Stupid Things which becomes a long psych bliss-out, whilst new single Super Kiwi is sped up and as loud as the trio are ever likely to get, a fuzzed-out beast that still has a melodic sensibility motoring underneath a la Dinosaur Jr's poppier moments. Mr Tough is an obligatory good-time inclusion, Styles Of The Times is a raucous punch of a song, and another personal favourite in Tom Courtenay gets a run. A sense of full circle comes from another rendition of Ohm, this time in noise mode, before the band close out with a face-melting take on The Beach Boys' Little Honda with a middle third that fries the brain.

But again this heavier set feels underdone, and the reason is that the quiet and loud aren't supposed to be separated like this – Yo La Tengo works when the measured and the explosion of colour and feedback are working in tandem. They have always been about maintaining a sublime rhythmic beauty even as everything either systematically coalesces into a chugging ball of white noise or remains an alleviated rumination on emotion and space, and separating those two elements strips the band of their power in some way. Not that the show has been poor – Yo La Tengo could never be tarred with that brush, and most songs tonight have been awe-inspiring – but this experiment hasn't necessarily worked.