Yo La Tengo: Never on the injured list

Still, he locates the bright side: "You have to appreciate the fact that they were all able to synchronize that. I think a lesser team would've had players go on the DL willy-nilly."

Yo La Tengo doesn't release records willy-nilly either. Their newest, Popular Songs, continues their habit of releasing every three years or so. "I think, possibly, we enjoy the part where things start to slow down," says McNew, intimating that the slowdown begets new compositions. That said, the gap between Popular Songs and its predecessor, 2006's I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass, wasn't filled with the usual stuff; lately, the band's been working on film soundtracks (including Greg Mottola's 2009 release Adventureland).

"It's been really fun and weird, [an interesting way of] making music together," says McNew. "They weren't like any of the other projects we'd done before, and we're always interested in stuff that just kind of comes up, and it's nice when we have time to say yes."

It goes without saying that Yo La also had time to say yes to Pop Montreal. And, as excited as many in the city are to have them here, it merits mention that the band is just as stoked to play Pop. Why?

"This will be a regulation-length performance," McNew says. "I tend to think of 'festival' as meaning something else. I tend not to think of [Pop Montreal] as a festival, because festivals just don't seem like that much fun, at least the big stage ones where you're forced to pee outdoors and things like that."

Yo La Tengo
w/ The Horse's Ha
At Pop Montreal, Club Soda (1225 St-Laurent), Oct. 2





 
 

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