Yes! Ira Kaplan's Found His Guitar

Heaven is white noise, and as much as I loved the almost-bucolic "And Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out" and "Summer Sun", Yo La Tengo launch "I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your A--" with ear melting distortion of "Pass The Hatchet I Think I'm Goodkind". So Kaplanaires everywhere rejoice now that a bit of the ole cobwebs've been dusted off.

At 77 minutes, near maximum CD length, it would sure be easy right now to tell you I believe "one of the extended jams could be cut" or "some songs just really aren't gonna seep in". REM's "Murmur", the benchmark for "let it seep in" clocked in at just under 45 minutes. But that wouldn't be honest to what I think the listening experience will be. "I Am Not Afraid Of You" shows us the band that gave plenty to the White Stripes and The Strokes giving up a bit to some of their own antecedents.

So what happens next? On the next track, "Beanbag Chair", you can pogo and jump up and down and throw pillows around the room while getting happy feet to the infectious rhythm. Punk loves destruction, but it's often so humorless about the whole business. Yo La Tengo, a band that's never been about destruction, throws in a playful trombone. "I Feel Like Going Home" finds Georgia Hubley's warm and understated voice in a sensuous melody of displacement and longing, a mood permeating the band's finest mid '90s work.

Nothing really prepares you though for, "Mr Tough," a surprisingly catchy white soul excursion containing perhaps the best chorus the band's ever written. Ira Kaplan breaks out a fine falsetto to carry a song inflected with grooves enough to keep hula hoops turning by themselves. The song's a call to fun with a bit of romance and danger thrown in.

The first four songs announce new sonic textures and a statement of purpose. One could throw the word "eclectic" around so recklessly when it's a usually a code word for "desperate enough to try anything once", and its true that "I Am Not Afraid Of You" contains about an equal mix of solid hooks, choruses, verses along side an experimental "well, what can we do with this instrument here" that doesn't always lead down a fruitful path. "Daphnia" could've haved the near 9-minute running time, found some focus. But then again, on what is now probably the 20th time I've heard the song this week it has a "warm rain on your window" haunting bucolic vibe that part of me wants to hear even more. Raw in the sonic details, the hiss and crackle and it sounds lo-fi to where you think there even might be a hole in the roof of the bedroom.

From Hoboken NJ the band at its noisiest and brashest often recalled the MC5 and the Stooges. And like those bands Yo La Tengo quickly recognized that music had more than fuzz guitars and bang. The band never sang with "soul" ala James Brown say, but when the band gave over "Nothing Will Turn Itself Inside Out" to its bucolic, romantic side it remained completely Yo La Tengo and of a piece.

The same holds true here for "Song For Mahila" "I Feel Like Going Home" off of "I Am Not Afraid Of You..." Like their forebearers and their descendents, the Tengo do have an exquisite penchant for white noise workouts where they get to soul and nuance beyond all the amps and feedback. "Point And Shoot" finds fevered, almost psychedelic garage jazz grooves married to Kaplan's buzzsaw riffs (If The Count Five had covered early '70s Miles Davis...). Deep down beneath the noise lies a quiet and beautiful expanse absolutely unaffected and unironic, a pure joy still.