Freewheeling Yo La Tengo, Oct. 22, First Unitarian Church Sanctuary

POSTED: Thursday, October 25, 2007, 9:28 PM

Filed Under: Music Show

Photo | Jessica Lee

I tried my best to hide in a crowded room. It's nearly impossible.

Yo La Tengo traditionally play ear drum-blasting shows. Which is fine. It’s just, while the loud parts mean amazing energy (Ira Kaplan humping his guitar, getting totally into the whole feedback thing), the quiet bits get lost in all that noisy rocking. So the idea behind the Freewheeling Yo La Tengo — the band’s Behind the Music-style, almost-acoustic incarnation — could not be more awesome. Everything goes right at their sold-out First Unitarian Church performance. They answer questions (albeit mostly silly ones — honestly, people, who cares about Georgia Hubley’s favorite mixed drink?), tell stories and give each other little sideways nods and smiles. Perhaps because of their willingness to take requests, Georgia winds up singing an unusually large portion of the set and, even weirder, you can hear every semi-mumbly word. Ditto on the normally raucous “Barnaby, Hardly Working” and “From a Motel 6”:
Tonight, they take it soft and slow. Ira looks kinda twitchy in his chair, like he wants to get up and shake his head back and forth, but it’s only after an audience member suggests they do I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass’ 11-minute freak-out jam, “Pass the Hatchet, I Think I’m Goodkind” — joking that it’d be funny since it’s far from acoustic-friendly — that the band goes completely wild. Launching into “Hatchet,” Ira (still sitting in chair) practically convulses while playing his guitar, James McNew pounds at his bass and Georgia replaces her drum brushes with drum sticks, which she thwacks with full force.
Also excellent: “Needle of Death,” a Bert Jansch-penned weepie that they rarely play (and that Jansch himself rarely plays); Johnny Cash’s “I Still Miss Someone”; and their own, achingly beautiful “Nowhere Near.” Jazz multi-instrumentalist Danny Ray Thompson joins them on sax for “Love Train” and switches to the flute for a mellowed-out “Autumn Sweater” during the encore. Yeah, you could see this new development in the life of Yo La Tengo as a sign of their getting old and, quite literally, settling down. But nah. Come Hannukah time, when they play eight shows eight nights in a row at Maxwell’s in Hoboken, the threesome will be back to their sweatin’, deafenin’, candle-lightin’ selves. Amen to both Yo La Tengos.

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