Gig: Yo La Tengo

Yo La Tengo / The Horse's Ha

The Opera House. Saturday, October 3, 2009.

And so, for the second night running, headed out to the Opera House. After a decent time there the night before, had some hopes that the venue would do right by me. Wrong, friendo. At the door, the bouncer takes a look at my satchel and I'm emphatically told I have to check it to gain entry. Why? Because it's a sold out show and all bags have to be checked — although purses of any description are apparently fine. I go to the coat check and I'm told that I have to pay separately, three bucks apiece, for my coat and bag — unless I can stuff my coat in my bag, in which case I can check them as one thing. But my bag is pretty small and there's no way it'd fit. So, after a couple moments of frantically transferring all my gear into various and now over-stuffed pockets, I check coat and bag and make my way into the hall, in a grumpy mood. I've just spent the money that I would have used for one of the venue's over-priced drinks, so I just found a spot of wall to lean against for a few minutes to regain my composure and relax. As things start to stir, I move up, taking a moment to admire the giant banner behind the stage.¹ I try to maintain focus as a guy with a bag slung over his shoulder — one a bit larger than the one I was forced to check — walks by in front of me.

Came in not knowing much about opener The Horse's Ha, but YLT usually shows good taste in the bands they choose to share the stage with.² I did know the singer was Janet Beveridge Bean, known for her work in Freakwater and Eleventh Dream Day and a friend of YLT. Hailing from Chicago, the principles are both immigrants to that city — Bean from the American South — charming twang in her banter attesting to that — and James Elkington (of The Zincs) from England. Bean sang and provided some melodica and shakers while Elkington sang in a low baritone not unlike Brett Sparks of the Handsome Family. The two often combined in a high/low harmonies as the band unspooled gentle arrangements around them. The five-piece (including cello and double bass) played in a quiet British folk vein, and it appears some of the band are members of Chicago's jazz/improvised music scenes. The band members members were mostly seated, with Elkington and the cellist facing each other, turned perpendicular to the audience — not a particularly engaging approach. That, plus the fact that their music was quiet and reflective made them a somewhat disjunctive pick as openers, and gave the sense this wasn't the right band at the right time. In a smaller, seated venue this stuff would be wholly engaging. In this big space, facing a largely indifferent crowd, it just didn't work. Listening back to their set, I find myself rather enjoying the songs; though I was trying to get into them while they played, it just wasn't working then.

And then the crowd started to thicken. As I held my spot, the ranks in front of me filled up. I was mostly hopeful that someone shorter than me would settle in front of me, and that made me thankful for the couple who moved into the space. At least until he took off his jacket and handed it to the woman, standing in front of me, who stuffed it in her purse slung over her shoulder, which poked me every time she leaned over to shout in his ear. Sigh. By the time Yo La Tengo took the stage, the floor was pretty packed, as the Opera House tends to get for sold out shows,³ but at least the crowd was pretty much all into it, and no longer talking so much.

With a stage setup that looks like something for a band twice there size — there were at least six "stations" for the three musicians to rotate between — the exciting part of a Yo La Tengo show is that you never know what you're gonna get. One would expect a fair sampling from the new album, sure, but what would the band pick from their vast catalogue to fill in around that? You're probably not going to hear everything you want, but they have enough great songs that you're pretty much guaranteed to get something you really want to hear. As it turned out, taking the stage, the band launched into "Double Dare" (from '93's Painful, possibly my all-time fave YLT alb). You might call this softening up the crowd before moving into new material, but the band wasn't going to do any more easing into it, moving on to nearly twelve minutes of "More Stars Than There Are In Heaven", the night's first extended feature for Ira Kaplan's guitar stylings.

And then a nice mix of new material and old. "The Summer", from 1990's acoustic and mostly-covers Fakebook was one of those unexpected tracks, and a lovely quiet interlude. "Stockholm Syndrome" — James McNew's vocal spotlight — was less of a surprise, having become a crowd favourite. And then the new "Periodically Double Or Triple" — if there's a unifying thread to the band's last couple albums, it might be an attempt to create their own Nuggets box set of all-new songs, such as this 'un, which was great fun to hear on stage.

Ira seemed to be in a buoyant mood, and gave, as usual, some quality banter, including tangential references to the Toronto Raptors and this warning: "at the risk of putter a damper on the evening, in the spirit of full disclosure, I gotta let you know there was a squirrel running around in here earlier today. We're nearly positive it's gone, but, y'know." Meanwhile, the band alternated quiet segments ("Black Flowers", "When It's Dark") with noisy ones ("Deeper Into Movies", "Big Day Coming"). The main set's ending mirrored the start, with a new guitar showcase ("And The Glitter Is Gone") and a classic ("Sugarcube").

Taking the stage for the encore, Kaplan commented he had seen a couple people in the crowd with banana t-shirts, reason enough to pull a VU cover off the pile — although in this case, we got relative obscurity "She's My Best Friend",⁴ which required a short huddle to discuss the chords. And then the seasonally appropriate "Autumn Sweater" in a slightly deconstructed version, before taking a request from the front row for "You Can Have it All", done quietly and acoustically — though the band has dispatched with the dance moves they used to have worked out for this one. Still, very pretty.

Coming back for a second encore, Kaplan sent out a cover of Devo's "Gates of Steel" to local punk crew Fucked Up and the band closed things out, appropriately enough, with "The Hour Grows Late", the entire performance lasting nearly two hours. All told, a pretty great show — this'd be the fifth time I've seen 'em, if my memory is correct, and this would stand up to any of the others. It had been awhile since the bands had passed through town for a full show; hopefully it won't be that long again.

Check out a loud and a quiet selection from this show here.

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¹ The banner employed Dario Robleto's buttons — made from melted-down Billie Holiday albums — as deployed on the back cover of YLT's new album Popular Songs.

² Past successes have included The Sadies, Lambchop, Portastatic and Daniel Johnston.

³ There must be something particular about the Opera House's layout that makes it seem more packed than other venues. Perhaps it's just the fact that the raised area further back doesn't have particularly great sound or sightlines makes it less a enticing place to watch the show sends more people cramming further forward.

⁴ Has anyone ever worked out what percentage of the complete Velvets catalogue YLT have covered? Now that would be a worthy live comp.