Yo La Tengo’s latest studio album, There’s a Riot Going On, emerged almost by accident. The New Jersey trio — vocalist/guitarist Ira Kaplan, drummer / vocalist Georgia Hubley and bassist/vocalist James McNew — were holed up in their Hoboken practice space making music and messing around with previously recorded snippets stored for safekeeping. However, at some point during this ideation process, which relied heavily on McNew manning Pro Tools, Yo La Tengo realized it wasn’t making demos or sketches to flesh out later, but a new record.
The resulting album sounds like a film score for a movie that doesn’t exist. Ambient instrumental passages weave in and out of more traditional-sounding songs in various styles:…
…feathery ’60s pop (“Shades of Blue”), peach-fuzz indie rock (“For You Too”), gentle bossa nova (“Esportes Casual”) and melancholy drone with psychedelic shading (“She May She Might”). “There’s A Riot Going On” feels like a detailed sonic sculpture created after an intense period of precise whittling — and it’s incredibly cohesive for an album that came together in phases.
…bassist James McNew described the creation of their fifteenth album as somewhat of a fluke, a hodgepodge of old and new recordings assembled using a computer system they hardly knew how to operate. The result of its disjointed construction is sprawling and psychedelic, brooding and reactionary. There’s A Riot Going On, in its despondent tone and jumbled foundation, resonates with the chaos and confusion of our era.