Yo La Tengo will release their latest record, Stuff Like That There, on August 28th through Matador Records. Ahead of the official release, the LP is streaming in full below via NPR.
Stuff Like That There may be the technical follow-up to 2013’s Fade, but it’s really more of a spiritual sequel to 1990’s Fakebook. Like that 25-year-old album, this new LP is made mostly of covers of songs by the likes of The Cure, The Lovin’ Spoonful, Hank Williams, and The Parliaments. YLT also cover themselves on “All Your Secrets”, “The Ballad of Red Buckets”, and “Deeper Into Movies”, as well as provide two entirely new tracks with “Awhileaway” and “Rickety”.
The record not only sees the band reunited with Fakebook producer Gene Holder, but original band member guitarist Dave Schramm. While also featuring mainstays Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley, bassist James McNew had to learn upright bass for the record, “an instrument he did not own, let alone know how to play at this time last year,” according to Kaplan.
“The idea of self-consciously going back in time and revisiting a record from 1990 seemed wrong in a way that we couldn’t resist,” Kaplan explained to USA Today. “We like the way the songs hold together as a group. I think it would be less captivating for us if it was, you know, 12 country songs or 12 songs from the new-wave era. The idea that we’re bouncing around is definitely part of the consideration.”
YLT has a handful of dates mapped out in the fall, including their first extended tour with Schramm since he left in the 1980s. Find those dates and more here, and listen to Stuff Like That There below. Pre-orders for the album are ongoing.
Stuff Like That There Tracklist:
01. My Heart’s Not in It (Darlene McCrea cover)
02. Rickety
03. I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry (Hank Williams cover)
04. All Your Secrets (remake of track from Popular Songs)
05. The Ballad of Red Buckets (remake of track from Electr-o-pura)
06. Friday I’m in Love (The Cure cover)
07. Before We Stopped to Think (Great Plains cover)
08. Butchie’s Tune (The Lovin’ Spoonful cover)
09. Automatic Doom (Special Pillow cover)
10. Awhileaway
11. I Can Feel the Ice Melting (The Parliaments cover)
12. Naples (Antietam)
13. Deeper Into Movies (remake of track from I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One)
14. Somebody’s in Love (The Cosmic Rays with Le Sun Ra and Arkestra cover)
