Yo La Tengo

Yo La Tengo’s “Spin the Wheel” tour is a great idea: take a band with years of material under their belt, including side projects and one-off experiments; give the audience a chance to focus on one project, era, or aspect of the band’s work for one set; and then add a second, straightforward set. It’s a move that could potentially inject a sense of spontaneity into an otherwise by-the-numbers show of new and classic material. Potentially. At the band’s Pittsburgh show last Saturday, the wheel did bring a sense of excitement and playfulness…which faded significantly over the course of two uneven sets.

Looking out over the packed venue, Yo La Tengo (Ira Kaplan, Georgia Hubley and James McNew) seemed genuinely excited to be back in Pittsburgh, reminiscing over the course of the evening about past shows at venues long since closed. After some complaining about a recent, unpleasant stint at Pittsburgh’s Hartwood Acres (a big field in a rich suburb where no one should play, ever) back in August, it was Time! For! The wheel spin!

To much cheering, game show music blared and Kaplan played host, explaining the concept for those few of us who hadn’t already been boning up in anticipation. The wheel, artfully designed (with accompanying t-shirts), featured eight different options: 1) Condo Fucks, a one-off joke project that produced the muddy covers album Fuckbook (2009); 2) McNew’s mellow side project Dump; 3) “The Freewheeling Yo La Tengo,” a Q&A session with music; 4) “The Name Game,” a set of Yo La Tengo songs with names in the titles; 5) “Sitcom Theater,” a band performance of a classic sitcom (in Chicago it was the Seinfeld episode “The Chinese Restaurant”); 6) Songs starting with S; and 7-8) The Sounds of Science parts 1 and 2, an instrumental score for French filmmaker Jean Painleve’s 2002 undersea documentary. If my small survey was any indication, most of us were hoping for 1, 4, or 6, which might afford the opportunity to hear rarely played songs from deep in the back catalog. Least appealing was 5: as cute as the sitcom idea is in theory, I had my fingers crossed I wouldn’t have to watch Kaplan and Hubley’s take on the courtship of Ross and Rachel.

Kaplan called one of the crowd’s many sweater-and-glasses-clad gentlemen up on stage for a wheel spin, and after some jokes about his consolation prize (a banana), it landed. We got Dump. The band actually seemed slightly disappointed (they’ve already played a Dump set on this tour), but everyone cheered anyway. I felt something akin to a Christmas morning letdown—the anticipation over, we settled in for what was looking to be a pretty standard show after all.

Though I wasn’t that familiar with it, the Dump material was pretty good: straight-ahead indie rock with moments of pure gorgeousness. McNew’s set list had a nice dynamic, wavering between ‘60s-sounding “do-do-do”s and rootsier pop. The centerpiece and real savior of the set was a cover of Prince’s “The Beautiful Ones” from Dump’s 2001 Prince tribute That Skinny Motherfucker with the High Voice? McNew was uncharacteristically sultry, crooning in a clear falsetto as the song burned slowly into the refrain: “Baby, I want you!” I was finally able to abandon my initial disappointment in the wheel’s result with the set’s closer, an explosive J Mascis-style guitar jam. Then Kaplan sighed, “We’re gonna go lay down for awhile,” and the band left the stage for what seemed like a long while. It’s hard to do a game show and a rock show back-to-back, I suppose.

When they reemerged, looking refreshed, they represented their more recent output with “Here To Fall” and the bouncy “Winter a Go-Go.” Next came crowd favorite “Moby Octopad,” one of the band’s more adventurous numbers, spot-on in its beautiful harmonies and funky bridge. The crowd moved, cheering hard and perking up: this is what they came to hear. Unfortunately, Yo La Tengo didn’t really ride that wave like they could have, slipping into sleepy territory with “The Race is On Again” and “Saturday.” Hubley’s pretty vocals couldn’t prevent some restless shuffling, exacerbated by sound issues that left the band nearly drowned out by small talk and beer bottle-clinking.

As veterans, the band sensed something slipping. They adjusted accordingly with some warm banter and a cranked-up “We’ve All Got Something to Hide,” followed by the reverb-drenched hit “Sugarcube.” Soon enough, though, they quickly faded back into dream-pop land, with Kaplan and McNew noodling softly for what felt like ages. It was a frustrating pattern, the band getting into a groove only to immediately fall out of it again. Though the final song was energetic, building into an epic, satisfactory closing, it was just another high in a see-saw of a set. The light design was equally wonky; aggressive strobes came out of nowhere to hammer us throughout the finale.

The encore found the band again talking about Pittsburgh shows we all wish we could go back in time and attend, like when they played next door to a New Kids concert, or the time at the Rosebud where everyone gathered around a piano for a sing-along. This show at Mr. Small’s didn’t provide anything so memorable, but they did play some covers: the Kinks’ “This is Where I Belong”—a Condo Fucks track—and Beat Happening’s “Cast a Shadow.”

But we were obviously all waiting for “Autumn Sweater.” That drum machine, that regal organ, Kaplan’s perfectly subtle vocals—it’s a sweet combination and we listened closely, hoping for those beginning notes to ring out. They didn’t. Instead, the band opted for an acoustic version that was so stripped down as to be almost a cappella. It got off to a rocky start when Kaplan and Hubley’s back-and-forth harmonies stumbled out of time. The mutant “Autumn Sweater” went on and on, with not a hint of the above-described familiarities that make the original work. Life was sapped out of the song, and it was sad.

We were grumbling a bit by the end, and even a final rendition of Fakebook’s (1990) “Tried So Hard” couldn’t undo the damage. Yo La Tengo put together a tour with a great concept; perhaps it promised too much, or perhaps we simply expected too much. Fun, sure, but odd: sometimes sleepy and intimate, other times epic and strobe-y, it lacked a sense of momentum and connection between songs. They’re just too good a band to be so underwhelming.

On that note, I propose a quirky theme for their next tour: fans compose and submit set lists, and the best ones win. Maybe that way, the band can reach their true live potential this late in their career. If not, at least they’ll have someone else to blame.