Yo la tengo and Portastatic at Academy of Music

I found this show slightly odd because I had already seen these bands paired together several years ago. A little disconcerting.

Portastatic was better than the first time that I saw them. Mac McCaughan is an odd singer because he appears to lack that ability to project his voice. This is especially true over loud songs. As a result, either the band plays softly or he get drown out. I have never seen is other band, Superchunk, but they are much louder on record and I cannot imagine that he can be heard when they play live. His guitar playing was excellent, and the bass player and drummer he assembled were sufficiently expressive. He did come up with a good explanation as to why he used a capo on one song: because he bought one, he wanted to use it just so that he could look more professional. "There is probably an easier way to play this song without a capo, but I don't want to know what it is."

Yo la tengo were slightly less focused than last time. This was the third time I had seen them play, the first in 1992 opening for My Bloody Valentine. That first show was one of the loudest shows I had ever attended--my ears were still ringing several days later even though I had worn ear plugs. This show was much more subdued by comparison, fitting the gentler mood of the last two albums.

The show was dominated by quieter songs. Yo la tengo may have made their name for lazy by noisy workouts, but they have always had slow pieces of amazing beauty (I would note "Nowhere near," which they did not play.) They also played the requisite number of loud numbers, the "Tom Courtney"s et al. They displayed great musicianship, shifting between instruments, taking turns singing, using Simon and Garfunkel-style harmonies, creating dense rhythm beds with two drum sets and lots of shakers (this is the strength of their current evolution.) However, there was a lull for about five songs toward the end of the first set. They got into a rut of playing several formless songs in a row. Not all of them were slow, but they were all too repetitive to stand out from one another. Even "Big Day Coming" grated in this context. The cover of Sun Ra's "Nuclear War" was fun live, using the members of Portastic to add extra percussion and singing in the chorus while McNew took the songs lead and played a small drum kit. It was fun singing "goodbye aassss ... assless." The band returned for two encores. They played for more than two hours, and we did not get out until 11.40 pm.

I should mention that Ira Kaplan looks like he could be my brother.