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hen I hear old Yo La Tengo songs, I think of my college relationship: shared mattress on a metal frame, bright orange walls, loud sound, still bodies. Our wordless intimacy was well suited by the music: vocals hover over intense guitar noise, and because you can understand only some of the words, you're free to make up your own meaning.



Yo La Tengo formed in 1984, and bassist James McNew joined the husband-and-wife team of Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley in 1991. One of the longest-lasting, most consistently revered indie bands of all time, their influence has been as significant as their mainstream profile hasn't. The band's eclecticism is legendary, and their thirteenth album is no exception. I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass is seventy-seven minutes long, and passes through almost as many moods. An eleven-minute, distorted, bass-driven song precedes an airy piano-pop tune. Horns and violins bulk up a couple of pieces and a synthesizer carries another. "The room got heavy, but only for a moment," sings Kaplan; then the vocal melts and blends for a beat before resurfacing. Kaplan is famous for

his reticence, but the threatening album title belied his willingness to discuss trios, feelings and avoidance. — Catrinel Bartolomeu




Kaplan: Are these going to be a lot of embarrassing questions that I'm going to refuse to answer?




Um, no. . . [laughing nervously]

Okay, good.




Can you tell me a little about your process of making music?

We rehearse five days a week. People don't tend to come in with ideas they've been working on. One of the pleasures of not having another job is that we can just get together in the middle of the day. We have a rehearsal space with all of our stuff, drums and keyboards, just everything. People gravitate towards one instrument or another and start playing. Sometimes we'll just move around. Songs tend to emerge from that.




Fun.

Yeah, it is. At its best, even though we are consciously hoping something comes out of it, we try not to put too much pressure — like, "We've got to have a song by six o'clock or nobody goes home." Some days are productive in a really clear way and other days are less obviously productive. We just try to trust that somewhere down the line, it all has a purpose.

When a song comes out, it almost seems magical to me. We'll play and maybe somebody will suddenly stop and say "Wait, can we start this again? And do all that, except this?" Other times we'll just kind of ooze one way. I'm frequently not sure how some of the songs go, what the chords are, because what I'm playing is just in response to what I'm hearing.



Does that mean that you're playing them differently each time?

I don't think we care about playing it the same. For the last five years we've played along with these underwater nature documentaries directed by Jean Painlevé. Each year we play the same pieces but from memory, but we allow memory to blur around the edges so the song changes. We try not to be too much of a slave to the past.


Did you say underwater nature documentaries?

Yeah, these are amazing movies. They're not shot on location, but in aquariums or something. They're extremely visual, they're not really educational. There's narration, but it's not always completely trustworthy. It's like that Bugs Bunny cartoon where his nephew comes to him for help with his history homework; Bugs explains history as he understands it and his nephew comes back with a zero on his test.




How did things settle when James became part of a trio with you guys?

I'm not sure it did settle things. Before he was in the group we thought of ourselves as a group anyway. But once he was there we realized that in most ways we never had really been one till he got there. It became a stable line up and something that could change. I think it's no accident that the biggest single change between records was between May I Sing With Me and Painful.



It sounds like you started creating as three people instead of two. If it's the way I imagine it, it's like you and Georgia are married. How does the relationship function in the band?

It just does. I think it would whether or not we were married. I mean you can have a working relationship with someone in the office, and then you go out with that person and it'll be different. The context and things will change. I mean, I've always kind of found the question about us being married to be. . . I've always been a little bit surprised by it as a topic. I guess I sort of understand it, but not in the way that people ask it.




Well, a friend left his guitar at my place and I started playing it. And I knew this girl, a bassist, and we'd talked as far as it was going to go. But we started playing music together and it was this different kind of exchange. Something about what was going on between us seeped into what we were playing. I wonder, if you're married to someone, how those things come in and out and how you think it works in a group of three.

Well, we started playing together very soon after we met, so that aspect of communicating or relating to each other has really been a part of knowing each other. When we met we both had instruments — I mean, it doesn't sound that far from what you just described. We had them, and we knew how to play them a little, but we didn't play them with other people. Playing with her was really opening up in a way that I hadn't to anybody, in certain ways, ever. I think it's just the nature of being in a band. It's just very emotional, and you are exposing yourself when you play something. You hear about bands that thrive on dissension, and I don't think we're one of those. I'm not much of a fan of brutal honesty. I mean, be honest, but in a way that. . . I don't want anybody saying that something I played, and tried my hardest to play well, sucks. It's just trying to be sensitive to other people. And maybe that has a lot to do with the fact that my wife is in the group.




In an interview I read, you said something about songs being more representations of feelings instead of instances. That songs weren't events, but moods. Does that sound familiar?

Yeah, I'll stand by that.



So if a song represents a mood, does that mean you're in that mood when you write, or rather that the song is a step away, a reflection?

The lyrics I write tend to have more reflection; they're written at the end of the songwriting process, so to a conscious and unconscious extent they're dictated by the music. We tend to have songs and melodies and singing parts without lyrics, and typically, in the recording studio, we are working furiously to write lyrics to finish the song. None of us is the kind of songwriter who, in a furious burst of inspiration, grabs a pen and writes down a bunch of lyrics. The mood is being dictated by the music, not necessarily by the mood I'm in.




I use music to change my mood, but I'm not sure it works a particular way. Sometimes if I'm sad I'll want something I can relate to, a song to commiserate with. Other times I want one to snap me out of it.

Well, I do think some of the saddest records I know are incredibly uplifting, so I certainly agree with that.



What's one of the saddest records you can think of?

Sister Lovers by Big Star.




If songs reflect moods, then maybe a we can play a game. What songs of yours come to mind for certain emotions or moods? Like, say, betrayal.

I don't know. I probably would shy away from explaining things like that. I will say one leapt to mind [laughs], just to be even more obnoxious in that answer.




That's terrible. Why don't you want to say it?

I just like the idea of people making of it what they will. Putting too many signposts, or any signposts, along the way, never seems that appealing to me.




I get it. I've heard artists talk about wanting listeners to understand the music on their own terms. But some of your albums accompanied important eras of my life. I doubt it would make a difference to me if I knew it meant something different to you. Is your reluctance to say something just easier, or because you don't want to strip anticipation away, or what?

I think there are probably a few things. If I said something that was counter to your experience, you might think that you were wrong and I was right because I wrote it and I should know. I don't necessarily believe in that conclusion. It's also just a way of keeping my distance. Obviously we get a lot of satisfaction being public, but I think we want to enforce a certain privacy by leaving certain things unsaid and keeping stuff at arm's length.




You guys are already up emoting and making yourselves vulnerable, and here I am trying to get more about what it means to you.

You know, later today I'm planning to go to a movie. I was thinking about this movie in advance with my own ideas about its creation, with no idea if they're true or not to what the filmmakers were thinking. But it occurred to me that I really don't even care — well, I care to a certain extent because I'd be kind of flattered that I was right that that's what they were thinking — but I'm sure I'm right whether they know it or not. I just like that idea of thinking about it that [independently], and I want to encourage people to do that about us.




I think a lot of people relate to the vulnerability of your music. I listened to Fakebook, And then nothing turned itself inside out and Genius + Love = Yo La Tengo with an ex, during some times when there were a lot of things we couldn't understand or talk about. Is there music that scored the loves of your life?

There's some. But you know, that's something I would never talk about because it's so personal. From a very early age, music was so important to me that it didn't even relate to. . . it wasn't the sound track to my life, it was just my life. So there were no songs that went with things. But that's changed. There are a couple that leap to mind, but again, I'm not going to say what they are.




Then what about some of the qualities of a love song?

Well, I think there's an intimacy, maybe the feeling of whispering even if you're not — that sort of quality of just talking quietly to someone and trying not to be overheard.




You said it's not that important to play the songs the same way every time. That made me think about sex, because why would anybody really want to do that the same way every time? Most good things are a little different every time. Why do you think people put that burden on music?

I think that we perform on the mistaken assumption that people will see us play again and again. We don't play our twelve most popular songs every night. That's not particularly professional, but I think it's creative. I think you would just get so bored so fast and start playing so listlessly. Or at least I would. [laughs] When I've gotten really excited about bands and seen them a couple of times and and they play essentially the same set, I've just been so deflated, and have lost interest almost as fast as I got it. I think we're the kind of band that we would like if we were in the audience.




Do you have any groupies?

No, not that I'm aware of. We're fairly accessible. People don't have to camp out outside the stage door hoping we'll come out.




I told my friend Sarah about the questions I was asking, and she thought that people would try to pick both you and Georgia up to take you home.

It's possible it's happened without us knowing. We might not have been alert to the signals.
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