30 years ago this week, one of the most adventurous yet unassuming bands ever released the second in a run of four amazing albums. From "Tom Courtenay" to "Blue Line Swinger" to "Pablo & Andrea", it remains an unbeatable classic.
Electr-O-Pura wasn’t Yo La Tengo’s first album. It wasn’t their “breakout” with either critics or college radio (Painful, their previous album, and first for Matador, got a fair amount of play in 1993, and 1992’s May I Sing With Me is the first time I remember hearing or reading about them.) It wasn’t a “statement” record or an “arrival” or whatever kind of overblown importance writers usually force on an album in articles like this. When Electr-O-Pura came out in May 1995, almost exactly 30 years ago, it was simply a great album by a band in the middle of an all-time run of great albums. Electr-O-Pura is important and beloved and remembered today entirely and solely because of its music, which perfectly fits Yo La Tengo—a humble, unflashy, unpretentious band that has created a titanic body of work over the last 40 years.
If Painful set the standard for Yo La Tengo albums, revealing a band that had become fully confident a decade into its existence, then Electr-O-Pura confirmed that it wasn’t a fluke. It finds the trio exploring the wide-open spaces that had been glimpsed throughout their history and that they focused on with a new clarity in Painful, the tension between restraint and abandon that defines their albums and live shows, where their music can be mellow and subdued one moment and drenched in noise the next. Even at their most chaotic Yo La Tengo remains patient and deliberate, and on Electr-O-Pura it all comes together most notably on the last song—which is also the band’s very best, according to at least one writer. (Me. It’s me.)
Let’s start at the end. No one song could sum up Yo La Tengo’s entire deal, but “Blue Line Swinger” might get the closest. What begins with a long, descending series of droning organ notes, scattershot drumming, and the sound of a guitar fitfully realizing a melody blossoms into a yearning, anthemic ballad, a gorgeous sunset of a pop song about being there for your loved ones and helping them when they’re down or unsure. Georgia Hubley’s luminous vocals run still but deep, characteristically free of melodrama and showy theatrics, and yet effortlessly full of emotion as they evoke the strength and support of a committed grown-up relationship. At the heart of this aching, dreamlike music lies a sure-eyed look at everyday love, and that kind of sums up Yo La Tengo: they’re grounded, reasonable, responsible adults enchanted by the possibilities of sound.
“Blue Line Swinger” is a true epic, almost 10 minutes of organ drone and Ira Kaplan’s splattery guitar, persistently moving forward while looking ever inward. What makes it so great can be found throughout Electr-O-Pura, sometimes coming together in full flower as it does on “Blue Line Swinger,” or often in isolation across the record’s 13 other songs. And if you lack the patience or the appropriate love of amazing things to fully embrace the album version, they released a shortened single edit called “(Thin) Blue Line Swinger” on the Camp Yo La Tengo EP; it’s somehow even dreamier without the long intro, and could be Yo La Tengo’s surest ticket into today’s burgeoning young shoegaze demographic
The short version of “Blue Line Swinger” wasn’t Electr-O-Pura’s first single, though—and the band jokingly listing fake run times for every song on the album artwork means first-time listeners aren’t prepared for that journey. If, like me, you bought Electr-O-Pura in May of 1995, you probably did so because of the lead single. “Tom Courtenay” was the closest thing Yo La Tengo had to an honest-to-god hit at the time; its Beatlemania-tweaking, Marshall Crenshaw-featuring video even got played on MTV’s 120 Minutes at least once. This anthem about a made-up ‘60s British movie starring Courtenay and Julie Christie remains one of the band’s most popular and most played songs, which is why it’s extremely messed up that it’s apparently not even one of their 60 most streamed songs on Spotify. It also proves that the band can get straight down to business when it wants to, with immediately catchy guitar lines and ‘60s-style “ba ba bas” in the background contrasting the rather depressing lyrics about a junkie escaping into old films, old memories, and, yes, drugs.
It’s a testament to Electr-O-Pura that those two immaculate songs don’t overshadow everything else on here. From the opening song “Decora” (which, in its gauzy, dreamlike haze, might be the closest Yo La Tengo gets to my bloody valentine), to the wistful folk of “Don’t Say a Word (Hot Chicken #2)” (one for fans of the Velvet Underground’s third album), to the abstract guitar improvisations of the gloriously sleepy “My Heart’s Reflection,” Electr-O-Pura is full of understated genius. Even for a band that specializes in late night records, this one is especially evocative of the quieter hours, from “Paul Is Dead,” which nails the sense of aimlessly walking through New York City at night, to the bite-sized character sketch of a musician at work in “The Hour Grows Late.” And the slide guitar in “Pablo & Andrea” is one of the most beautiful and affecting moments in the Yo La Tengo catalogue (which, if I haven’t given that impression yet, is massive, so that’s saying something). And all of it feels like the most effortless thing in the world—like Kaplan, Hubley, and James McNew just casually whipped up this sprawling, ambitious, relatable double album that’s as remarkable for its lack of affectation as it is for its emotional depth.
Very few bands have made an album as good as Electr-O-Pura. It is not Yo La Tengo’s best album. Opinions can differ all they want but the correct answer is 1997’s I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One, which does everything Electr-O-Pura does but, uh, more of it (and with a little bit more variety, too). For my money, the music Yo La Tengo released between 1993 and 2000 is one of the all-time greatest runs in music history, with four generous, almost flawless albums and a fair amount of additional singles, B-sides, and EPs. Electr-O-Pura is a crucial part of that, obviously, and one of the defining albums of that time, place and scene (yes, I guess you can call it “indie rock”). And Yo La Tengo is still producing excellent, adventurous music 30 years later, pushing themselves (and their audience) with every record and every show. (And they’re even still on Matador, true lifers along with Pavement’s Stephen Malkmus, who also released an all-time classic on the label almost exactly 30 years ago.) Electr-O-Pura isn’t significant today because of some ginned up historical context, but because it was, and is still, a brilliant record by a brilliant band—one that sounds every bit as good today as it did in 1995.
Senior editor Garrett Martin writes about videogames, TV, travel, theme parks, wrestling, music, and more. You can also find him on Blue Sky.
