Monday, March 28, 2005
let's be undecided
Some of the choices made on Prisoners of Love, Yo La Tengo’s recently released two (or three) disc greatest hits thingamajig, are just confusing. Neither of the two discs proper is longer than 58 minutes, which makes them both shorter than every YLT album since 1993’s Painful. Why make the set two-discs if you aren’t going to max out the time allotment? There’s basically fifty minutes just wasted here, almost an hour that easily could have been filled with more top-notch material, like “Nowhere Near”, “Alyda”, “My Heart’s Reflection”, or the rocking “Today is the Day”. And considering the already illogical brevity, what’s the rationale for cutting a few minutes off “Blue Line Swinger”? Or, most egregiously, including the shorter, more rocking, but far inferior version of “Big Day Coming”, instead of the unutterably amazing, trance-inducing one that leads off Painful? They obviously weren’t dealing with time constraint issues, so it’s inexcusable to omit the slow “Big Day Coming”, which, in my opinion, is one of the two or three best songs they’ve ever made. What is here is all deserving, except maybe their cover of “Nuclear War”, but there are so many other classic YLT songs that didn’t make the cut but easily could have.
The third disc gets it right, though. At 75 minutes, it’s as long as the hits discs should be. And although there are only five previously unreleased songs, there is more than enough obscure and hard to find stuff on here to satiate all but the most die-hard of YLT fans. “Pencil Test” and “Weather Shy”, in particular, are both very good, and the demo of “Big Day Coming” is a nice mix of the momentum of the fast version and the droning dreaminess of the slow one. And it’s good to hear the excellent “Mr. Ameche Plays the Stranger” again, even though one could question whether the Camp Yo La Tengo ep was really any more obscure than the Shaker single. That’d just be picking nits, though, so let’s not worry about it. About the only song I can think of that isn't on here but should be is one of those covers of "Rocket #9" they put out on that seven-inch a few years back.
Anyway, this is a fine effort, but noticeably less impressive than it could have been. It’s probably an improvement over that Guided by Voices best-of, though.
Some of the choices made on Prisoners of Love, Yo La Tengo’s recently released two (or three) disc greatest hits thingamajig, are just confusing. Neither of the two discs proper is longer than 58 minutes, which makes them both shorter than every YLT album since 1993’s Painful. Why make the set two-discs if you aren’t going to max out the time allotment? There’s basically fifty minutes just wasted here, almost an hour that easily could have been filled with more top-notch material, like “Nowhere Near”, “Alyda”, “My Heart’s Reflection”, or the rocking “Today is the Day”. And considering the already illogical brevity, what’s the rationale for cutting a few minutes off “Blue Line Swinger”? Or, most egregiously, including the shorter, more rocking, but far inferior version of “Big Day Coming”, instead of the unutterably amazing, trance-inducing one that leads off Painful? They obviously weren’t dealing with time constraint issues, so it’s inexcusable to omit the slow “Big Day Coming”, which, in my opinion, is one of the two or three best songs they’ve ever made. What is here is all deserving, except maybe their cover of “Nuclear War”, but there are so many other classic YLT songs that didn’t make the cut but easily could have.
The third disc gets it right, though. At 75 minutes, it’s as long as the hits discs should be. And although there are only five previously unreleased songs, there is more than enough obscure and hard to find stuff on here to satiate all but the most die-hard of YLT fans. “Pencil Test” and “Weather Shy”, in particular, are both very good, and the demo of “Big Day Coming” is a nice mix of the momentum of the fast version and the droning dreaminess of the slow one. And it’s good to hear the excellent “Mr. Ameche Plays the Stranger” again, even though one could question whether the Camp Yo La Tengo ep was really any more obscure than the Shaker single. That’d just be picking nits, though, so let’s not worry about it. About the only song I can think of that isn't on here but should be is one of those covers of "Rocket #9" they put out on that seven-inch a few years back.
Anyway, this is a fine effort, but noticeably less impressive than it could have been. It’s probably an improvement over that Guided by Voices best-of, though.
