After a few big shows in New York earlier this week to really mark the 30th anniversary Yo La Tengo first took to the stage, the band played the sold-out 9:30 Club in D.C. Friday where they had played many times before in the past 30 decades.
Frontman Ira Kaplan remembered their first gig here at the old 9:30 opening for the city’s own Slickee Boys. But they have played with so many bands over the years, parts of their show was augmented by them. While nothing near the shows in New York, where just about every member of the band joined the trio on stage at one point, numbering 20, there was David Ramirez helping out on an encore number from his D.C. band Hypnolovewheel, “I Dream of Jeannie,” and the whole of Lambchop — all half dozen members, joining on a beautifully done show ending cover of Big Star’s “Take Care.”
Yet the whole of the set careened back from their latest album, “Fade” with the opening “Ohm,” “The Point of It,” “Before We Run” and “I’ll Be Around,” but also “Double Dare” from their recently re-released 1993 “Painful” and sprinklings of very early things like “The Pain of Pain” “Lewis,” and “Satellite.”
Yo La Tengo can churn up an awesome sound – with drummer Georgia Hubley and bassist James McNew laying down a tight beat with Kaplan going crazy on a fuzzed out guitar. Sometimes he gets it going so fuzzed out he’ll scrape the strings across the top of the amp or, at one point, merely hand his guitar to the audience and let them pound and skronk around on it for a while — it couldn’t be worse than his noise and it isn’t.
Yet for all that fury, the band is capable of hushed beauty as well, in ballads that seem almost whispered, either by Kaplan or Hubley. Crucially, the crowd shut up as well allowing the band to get as quiet as it was loud. Perhaps the band was inspired in this by Lambchop’s opening set. The quiet band from Nashville was hand chosen to open the show and did so with some brilliant, quietly-observed songs from Kurt Wagner and company
The band hadn’t played live in a while; Wagner’s been busied by painting. But with a group that didn’t scrimp on players, they each lent the right color to the subtle pieces. What they established early with hushed effectiveness was echoed later in Yo La Tengo’s set, and especially that combined finale.
