Yo La Tengo - "....And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out"

Human tales come a dime a dozen. Some are wracked in the irrefutable guilt of middle age, living a life in inescapable bondage, attached to an ever-fleeting aspiration that died long ago, yet our too-human need to derive purpose out of nothingness drives us onward, even in the face of undeniable failure. Others, still, are young yet and are just beginning. The rebellious, inexorable angst of youth clashing with generations before them, lost in a haze of confusion and irresolution, quarreling with a faceless adversary that seems both insurmountable and insidiously vexing.

With "....And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out", Yo La Tengo explore every facet of the human journey, all the while creating an astoundingly beautiful (if not overwhelming) patchwork of Americana, kitschy lounge and, of all influences, Ennio Morricone and his contemporaries. This is an album that draws from a number of soundscapes, some more obvious than others, but it does it in a way that ultimately works. From the moment one glances at the enigmatic cover artwork, they know they're in for a memorable listening experience, evoking a glance at idyllic middle-America surruptitiously at war with itself, unaware of pending doom from outward forces. It's a return to the unspoken paranoia of post-war life, a fear of the unknown, a fear of the potential beast lurking within our innermost psyche.

The implied landing of a spacecraft, light caressing the ground of a quiet, suburban setting....it's mid-summer, early in the evening. Families are sitting down to dinner, chatting....ignoring. Dejected and estranged in one form or another from each other. What seems to be another prosaic and uneventful night becomes something far more. Self-reliance and togetherness become mandatory. It's fight or flight. Do you face the outward danger alone, or do you go inside of yourself? Abandon those you love for the sole purpose of self-preservation and survival? This is a study of humanity and of restrained emotions. It, too, is the American under an extra-terrestrial lens; as inextricably human as these compositions are, they also hold an otherworldly, almost alien perception of middle-American life, out of step with the times yet still remaining very contemporary. It's this peculiar duality that shapes the album from beginning to end.

All of these issues are ingeniously explored in this 2000 release on Matador, Ira Kaplan's understated, plaintive wail relegated to a mere whisper on the nostalgic, romantic paean "Our Way to Fall", with its feathered drums and understated refrains. Kaplan's wife, Georgia Hubley, in her immediately recognizable childish coo, pleads for the down-and-out soul of a man living on borrowed time, lost in past glories ("Let's Save Tony Orlando's House"). James McNew is also a factor, his reserved bass swimming beneath a current of flanged-out guitars, steady-yet-bucolic drum loops and patterns. It never seems lost among the instrumentation, but rather seems to guide it into a state of consummate pastoral euphoria, the soundtrack to a night spent alongside brooks in the countryside, lying on one's backside and staring into the stars in abiding wonderment. The trio, masterfully, have crafted a collection of songs that manages to retain the diversity of previous albums, yet remains thematically cohesive throughout -- a difficult undertaking, but they succeed.

However: the album, for all of its restrained musical virtue, can drag on in sections. Most notably is the closer, "Night Falls On Hoboken", which at first begins as though it takes a page out of Calexico's book of bromidic, Southwestern/No Depression-influenced banality descends into a repetitive loop of guitar twang and Tuckeresque drum sequences. What would work as the perfect closer in a three or four minute format goes on for an eternity, never going anywhere, never achieving the lofty pseudo-progressive goals that it sets for itself. Maybe, then, it is the perfect closer to an ode to the forgotten, a tribute to the everyman who spends his life seeking but never finding, lost in a sea of his own doldrums.

In this way, it could be said that "....And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out" is a cathartic call-to-arms for the jaded and the disenchanted of the world. The soundtrack to that audacious dreamer that dare rise above the constrictions of daily ritual and forge the life of their choosing from the ashes of one steeped in hackneyed familiarity. "For those that dare dream, you have already achieved." Thanks for keeping faith alive and well in hearts the world over, Yo La Tengo.

My verdict: ****1/4