Yo La Tengo

The amplifiers that had laid in wait at the Yo La Tengo practice pad for the last eighteen months warm up to a sunrise lit from underneath on a Hoboken sound stage made up of remnants of Yma Sumac's "Xtabay" and the orchestration of the Mingus Dynasty. The credits roll over "Beach Party Tonight," the lead cut from Yo La Tengo's twelfth record 'Summer Sun', which pulls you into the scenery with its gentle, yet foreboding, tentacles. Careful with that beach ball, Eugene, as the shards of glass tempered to look like sand rip up your heels as you enter what could be the darkest summer surf record ever recorded. A backdrop of winter storms paints nearly every reference to summer, sunshine, and good will towards men (with lyrics "you blame the sun as the cause of the shadows on the wall" in the Gilberto Gil stretch of "Season of the Shark" to the "summer stays too long" refrain in the sixth cut "Tiny Birds," as voiced by bassist James Mcnew). The pared-down and laid-bare instrumentation propping up hushed vocals, like an unseen undertow, may pin you down drowning if you stumble in unaware.