YO LA TENGO / THE PASTELS / THE HANGOVERS
London LA2
I’m quite annoyed with myself for missing most of the Hangovers’ set, because they seemed to be carrying off a particularly audacious take on electro indiepop with country bunged in. Conversely, the Pastels have regressed further into droll indie pop posturing with little life and extremely annoying wantonly bad haircuts. But it doesn’t matter because we were there to see the main attraction.
I think that Yo La Tengo were put on this earth to provide sublime harmony to all and sundry. At times this gig positively shimmered. It shone in its intricately moving glory. It rolled your brain around the room with its grooves and then snapped it back into place with yet more harmonic glory. To be fair, it did fall flat on its face on at least two occasions but we’ll let that go for having the panache to elicit a second encore and to then use it to cover Adam And The Ants. Yes, these people are that coolly accomplished. Angular yet soothing, Ira Kaplan’s guitar work was there to be marvelled at - be it spitting fuzzy spikes or breathless, structurally perfect progressions. The times the whole scene suffered was when they meandered into odd synth work and relied on mumbling vocal harmonies to do work the magic they were able to coax from their instruments. The best moments of the evening came from ‘Electr-o-Pura’, particularly with ‘Tom Courtenay’ demonstrating just how fine the vocal talents of this threesome really are. Harmony harmony harmony. I just like to keep saying it because it makes me remember exactly how cool it was.
