[photos by PSquared Photography]
Yo La Tengo has never been shy inviting guests of all sorts to play live with them. Just peruse the pages of this site for audio evidence of the frequency and often mindbending success of those collaborations. For Saturday night’s show, the second of the Bell House run, they welcomed perhaps the most eclectic guest we’ve ever seen, a woman whose name we only heard as “Yen” playing a stringed Chinese instrument called the guzheng. Wikipedia tells us that the guzheng usually has 21 strings and movable bridges and it dates back about 2500 years. Although in recent years, the instrument has found its way into some rare rock and jazz compositions, the closest I’ve ever seen to this type of collaboration was during Bjork’s 2007 tour when Min Xiao Fen guested for one song on the Chinese stringed instrument the Pipa for all of the NYC dates. But that was one song. The Yo La Tengo guest played on the majority of the first (acoustic) set, and with one minor quibble, the instrument added a unique subtle depth to all of the tracks upon which is was featured. Perhaps my favorite song that featured the collaboration was “Paddle Forward”, where the rhythmic sound of the guzheng strings paralleled and enhanced the water imagery of the lyrics. The only song where perhaps the addition didn’t quite work was on “Green Arrow” where Ira’s slide guitar solos sounded too close in tone to the guzheng, and the climaxes sounded a bit cluttered. But all in all, this guest appearance was one of the more memorable and unique and was quite the success. For the electric set we were back to the trio and as with all the second sets this week, it raged from start to finish. This night’s closing song was a twenty-minute working of “Tango” that touched on all aspects of the band’s sound — quiet melody, rich harmonic instrumentation, thrash, unpredictable solos and a crescendo for the ages. The encores featured three covers and were icing on the cake of another amazing YLT experience.
I recorded this show with the Neumann Hypercards mounted on the rail in front of the soundboard and mixed with an excellent feed by veteran YLT FOH Mark Luecke. The sound quality is superb, enjoy!
Stream “Nowhere Near”:
Stream “Before We Run”:
Download the Complete Show [MP3] / [FLAC] or [FLAC]
Note: All of the material on this site is offered with artist permission, free to fans, at our expense. The only thing we ask is that you download the material directly from this site, rather than re-posting the direct links or the files on other sites without our permission. Please respect our request.
Yo La Tengo
2013-12-14
Bell House
Brooklyn, NY USA
Digital Master Recording
Soundboard + Audience Matrix
Soundboard (engineer Mark Luecke) + Neumann KM-150s > Edirol R-44 (Oade Concert Mod) > 24bit 48kHz wav file > Soundforge (level adjustments, set fades, downsample) > CDWave 1.95 > (tracking) > TLH > flac (320 MP3 and Tagging via Foobar)
Recorded and Produced
by nyctaper
Setlist:
Set 1
[Total Time 49:29]
01 Ohm
02 Green Arrow
03 Paddle Forward
04 Fog Over Frisco
05 The Point of It
06 Cornelia and Jane
07 I’ll Be Around
08 Autumn Sweater
09 Nowhere Near
Set 2
[Total Time 1:34:10]
10 Stupid Things
11 Well You Better
12 False Alarm
13 Super Kiwi
14 Shaker
15 Before We Run
16 Double Dare
17 Decora
18 Ohm (electric)
19 The Story of Yo La Tango
20 [encore break]
21 Drug Test
22 [banter – Hanukkah]
23 Gimme All Your Lovin [ZZ Top]
24 Griselda [Peter Stampfel]
25 [banter – false start]
26 Behind That Locked Door [George Harrison]
If you download this recording from NYCTaper we expect that you will PLEASE SUPPORT Yo La Tengo, visit their website, and purchase their latest album Fade and its related special releases from Matador Records [HERE].
really looking fwd to hearing this one! thx as always for y’all’s intrepid taping pursuits. i got a little of that old Hanukkah feeling when you posted the 1st night of this run…
As always Dan thanks for what you do. Cool Stabler jersey too..