Review Summary: Yo La Tengo establish themselves as beautiful soundscapers, but there's a lot more to it than that.
There's tangible anger beneath all the smiles and palatability. On 1993's painful, we find one of America's premier acts coming in to their own, and creating perhaps their most cohesive work. This is not discounting 97's I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One, which stands as one of my all time favorite albums, certainly of it's year (and yes I've heard OK Computer). Where I Can Hear The Heart is a sprawling tribute to the love and appreciation of music as a whole, Painful is a focused, concise artistic statement.
Take Big Day Coming, the tune that ushers the album in and out. Guitarist Ira Kaplan and the band explore songcraft like the impressionists of the late 19th century, painting identical scenes at different times of the day to study the gentle interplay between shadows and changing light. Clocking in around 7 minutes, the opening version is a slow, beautiful progression built on a simple back-and-forth organ line (a staple of the album), evoking images of a sleeping city at dawn, and that feeling you get when you're the only one awake in the early hours. Peaceful, beautiful, intimidating. When you get to track 10, it's a different story. It's that same street scene, but it's rush hour. The trem-ed out guitars hang on to the tempo just barely, and at certain breaks you're sure the band is truly about to lose control of this monster they've created. It's this dichotomy between the calm and the frantic, tied together with an overarching sense of isolation and loneliness, that preside over Painful.
The band clearly borrows heavily from Shoegaze here, perhaps more than anywhere else. But this is not just some slowdive rip. The reliance on effects is significantly muted, and the expression of genuine emotion (not just one-tone sadness) separates this from the majority gazey contemporaries. In fact, it's the bitterness, felt through breaks in Kaplan's touchingly sweet delivery, that gives this album it's edge. Even the nicer tunes (especially nowhere near, sung by the wonderful Georgia Hubley) have an undercurrent of dissatisfaction. Musically, this nascent fury is expressed through moments of dadaist organ smashing and Ira Kaplan's incredible talent for manipulating feedback currents to create an ominous, almost cloudy atmosphere.
Highlights include the mid-album gem Sudden Organ (whose tune would be re-examined much like Big Day Coming on I Can Hear the Heart, through the perfect Autumn Sweater), the lightning charged From a Motel 6, and the droning, tireless instrumental fade-out of I Heard You Looking. Big Day Coming goes without saying. Give this album a listen, it's great.
9/10
