Fireside Chat

Yo La Tengo

Matador, Hoboken, USA

Hailing from the birthplace of both baseball and Frank Sinatra - Hoboken, New Jersey - Yo La Tengo are one of the quintessential American indie rock bands. Though Manhattan is just across the Jersey River, even their noisiest outbreaks seem more relaxed (and, as Robert Christgau once noted: more hummable) than tracks by peers like Sonic Youth. Formed in the mid-80s by drummer Georgia Hubley and Ira Kaplan, they went through some bass players to slowly mutate from a naive indie band to one of the most versatile groups around. By the time they released their first masterpiece 'I Can Hear The Heart Beat As One' in 1997 they effortlessly moved from feedback-drenched Beach Boys covers to electronic shuffles without missing a beat. Since then hey have continued to release albums to great acclaim, started to do soundtrack work, covered just about every song imaginable and throw in an odd move here or there, like the garage rock covers album 'Fuckbook' released under the Condo Fucks guise in 2009. Learn all about that and more in this Fireside Chat straight from a cozy back room in Düsseldorf, Germany.