Yo La Tengo - And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out

First one I owned. It gets boring but "Our Way to Fall" and "Madeline" are sublime. The cover complements the music.

Wussy obv listened long and hard.

love Wussy

for me I Can Hear.. is the one which gets boring

i can remember being slightly disappointed with this one after the one-two-three punch of painful / electra-pura / i can hear the heart beating, but whenever i play it now it sounds pretty classic. makes me think of falling in luvvv.

For me, the 1-2-3-4 punch was May I Sing With Me - Shaker EP - Painful - Electr-O-Pura; each record miraculously surpassed the previous one. There was lots of great stuff on I Can Hear The Heart too, but also some deeply unnecessary aimlessness.

I was a little disappointed in this too, but it sounds a better when I revisit it. And their live shows at the time were still overwhelmingly insane.

But after this record/tour, I was done with them.

This is my favorite, by far. Such a great late night vibe on this one, will have to revisit it before picking.

Let's Save Tony Orlando's House

And their live shows at the time were still overwhelmingly insane.

OTM -- I saw two of the Lambchop/YLT shows in San Francisco on this tour and they might be the best gigs I've ever been to.

their "Noise" songs sounds kinda dated today imo.

that's one of the reasons this record is their best.

For me, the 1-2-3-4 punch was May I Sing With Me - Shaker EP - Painful - Electr-O-Pura;
yeah, i definitely love everything they did in the 90s unreservedly.

Probably Tony Orlando but I'm obsessed with Cherry Chapstick at the moment so i'm voting that. When I shouted out a request for it during the encore on their recent tour, Ira quickly replied 'NO!' and moved on.

makes me think of falling in luvvv.

haha, otm. this was totally a makeout album for me in college. i so strongly associated it w/ the various crushes i had my freshman year of college. i also associate it w/ finally getting to sleep after pulling my first all-nighter in college for a philosophy paper.

i almost hadn't listened to it in almost 10 years until a few weeks ago. it's really good, probably my favorite yo la tengo album. but holy shit, it's really long! i did not remember at all that it's close to 80 minutes.

"everyday" is a cool opener but there's no way it should be almost 7 minutes. cut it down to 3 minutes and it would be an even better opener. otherwise you risk getting bored on the first track.

has anyone listened to "Night Falls on Hoboken" more than once willingly?

love that song! but i like really long, mellow repetitive songs so ...

are you serious?

it's what i voted for.

but i listen only to it's first 6 minutes or so

When I saw them in Athens, GA, on this tour they opened with Night Falls and all the kids in the 40 Watt got restless and started talking. Totally drowned the band out who got visibly angry and played a super short set. Luckily I'd also just seen them in Atlanta which was great

for me it's "our way to fall." it defines the album for me. next would probably by "last days of disco."

re: this being a makeout album, "cherry chapstick" was some kind of in-joke during a romantic thing i had with this super cute israeli-american girl, she always wore it when we hung out.

there's a lot of stuff here that's good but could easily have been left off the album:

"crying of lot g"
"from black to blue"
"tired hippo"

I was a bit bored by this one at the time...and still am to some extent. I'll go for "Madeline" for fitting in with the sound of the album while still standing on its own well.

I bought a vinyl copy a couple of years ago and got it autographed by everyone when they were here performing The Sounds of the Sounds of Science. "From Black to Blue" is my favourite; overall, I prefer Painful and I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One.

Voted "Last Days Of Disco"... wish they had wrote more songs like that.

Listening back now to refresh my memory and the backing to Saturday is freaking fantastic.

Painful reminds me of Spacemen 3 and i prefer Spacemen 3

all my favorite songs from "i can hear the heart beating..." are the ones that would fit easily on this album (e.g. "damage," "green arrow", "one pm again" "the lie and how we told it" "center of gravity")

also i think the soundtrack work they did for "old joy" is some of favorite stuff by them

I like to pretend this was their final album, and that everything else has either been stuff from the vaults or stuff from a band that's carried on in the Yo La Tengo tradition, like fIREHOSE

this album reminds me of my friend who died the same month it came out
he loved them and was a really good person with big problems

this is not my favorite YLT because it just makes me weepy and sad
i'm glad it reminds other people of better times though. it's a pretty album. also lol i have heard that same thing about cherry chapstick from at least a half dozen people! everyone wore cherry chapstick in those days.

electropura is my favorite.

Electropura one of my least favorites. But I know lots of people dig it.

"You can have it all". What a lovely song. It reminds me of New York. The beat kinda clips along like a subway train!

Sorry about your friend, LL. You've provided the inscription for my own headstone, written by a non-fan: "He loved Yo La Tengo and was an okay person and had many problems--chief among them that he loved Yo La Tengo."

For me, Painful > I Can Hear > Fakebook > And Then Nothing > Electropura and May I Sing With Me (tie) > all the stuff before Fakebook >>>>>>>>>>>>>> everything after And Then Nothing

"Tears Are In Your Eyes" used to make me maudlin and weepy as hell. Probably voting "Madeline" now, though "Last Days of Disco" is a close 2nd.

whats the one song about like the awesome cardigan or the nifty sweater.

I think it's called "Awesome Sweater."

makes me think of falling in luvvv.

haha, otm. this was totally a makeout album for me in college. i so strongly associated it w/ the various crushes i had my freshman year of college. i also associate it w/ finally getting to sleep after pulling my first all-nighter in college for a philosophy paper.

it's funny, when it came out i also associated it with that stuff (bc i was falling in luvvv at the same time) but when i listen to it nowadays it almost sounds like it's an album about depression, or maybe about an epic fight that nearly leads to a divorce (tears are in your eyes, the crying of lot g). or maybe both: being in a relationship where both sides are prone to being down, and the fights that situation sometimes leads to.

it took me forever to pick up on this because it was my sleepy time album for a long time, but the theme pops up again and again:

I kept a smile on my face
For anyone looking
Tried to turn away questions
Before being asked
Let my mind go out of tune, out of tune

there are several songs about falling in love, or just the bliss of being in love, but they're always past tense. like this:

And the song said "Let's be happy"
I was happy
It never made me happy before
It asked "Do you remember?"
And I remember, remember like it wasn't long ago
And the song said "Don't be lonely"
It makes me lonely
I hear it and I'm lonely more and more

Where I belong, where I belong

i'm voting for "night falls on hoboken", a hidden gem at the end of the record, and the one i'll vote for here. the words are packed up at the beginning, but again they point toward the desire to battle out of depression, in this case together.

Come on, let's leave our misery
And crawl toward where we want to be
Can't we try?
Can't we try?

then it's 15 minutes of melancholy. it gets softer and softer and manages to fade into wallpaper. on one hand it can be interpreted as a failed attempt at breaking out of the sadness, as the improvisational guitar playing slowly tugs and pulls but never escapes the bass ostinato. but it's also a wonderfully musical analogue to the slow drift of falling asleep, and that also matches up with the final, nearly whispered words of the album: "Come on, sleep one night peacefully / Then I'll yawn all day easily".

it reminds me of the feeling you have at the end of one of the worst days of your life. you just want it to end. you want to sleep. you want the dreams that are hopefully unrelated to your current predicament, and you want those 15 seconds when you first wake up and you haven't yet thought of who just died, or the relationship that just ended. the way this album treats a relationship on the rocks is absolutely brilliant. it's specific and universal at the same time. it's tough for me to listen to it any more, but whenever i do it evokes that feeling you get when you've exhausted yourself through arguing; you've made good points and "won", you've said dumb things that you instantly regret, you've yelled and then refused to talk for hours. you don't recognize yourself. and then at some point you've painted yourself into a corner and the only way to get out is to sleep. you want to wake up before the other person and make them coffee and be the best that you can be, or the way that you were, and that's impossible tonight but possible in the morning.

ugh, such a beautiful album.

TONY ORLANDO

that's a very nice post km. it's interesting that it has such a specific personal status for so many people. it was my sleeping music too, for about a year, as the relationship i was in that went on for several years more was getting into its spending-24-hours-a-day-with-each-other stage. i hadn't listened to it for quite a while after that but then last year i realised how a lot of the musical qualities and atmospheres that hit me the most now probably started to have that impact on me through this album.

They opened in Chi on this album's tour, after a transcendent Lambchop set, with (what seemed to me) a 45 minute version of "Night Falls On Hoboken", with a gong player, and it was amazing, the best (looooong) moment of their set. So that's my vote. It reminds me of long summer nights, when the heat subsides and the grasshoppers and cicadas take over the night, fading into stasis.

btw i've always wondered, what is the song that says "do you remember", "let's be happy", and "don't be lonely"?

Last Days of Disco

but BESIDES that

Let's Save Tony Orlando's House!

http://www.simpsonitos.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/troy.jpg

Love love love this album for so many reasons, even if it makes me all sad and weepy.

Is there a YLT ilm tracks poll coming anytime soon? I need one.

he just keeps talking about how much he like that sweater. "you in your awesome sweater".

add me in to the makes me think of falling in luvvv cru as well. iirc Matador sent out promos of this unusually far in advance (considering this was just for the university newspaper) and it timed very nicely w/ that

idk if Cherry Chapstick is the quote-unquote best song on here but it's the one w/ the highest level of lasting earworminess

as w/ most veteran bands I feel a lot of admiration towards them for having a lasting and apparently enjoyable career where they do more or less what they want but for my own selfish purposes it wouldn't have bothered me if they'd not released any more albums after this one

Tony Orlando's House could be an outtake from Emperor Tomato Ketchup.

I listened to this a ton when it came out and even bought a poster that hung inside my closet.

this is also a time capsule album for me that i'm going to save for another 5-10 years maybe.

too soft, too long. i liked to play it at the time but subsequent albums made me retroactively give up on this one too for no obvious reason, also 'painful' for some reason, but i never stopped listening to 'heart' or 'electr-o-pura'.

i was on college radio at the time and there was a dude, the music director maybe or some mover and shaker there, who was SUUUUPER into the album, like more than i thought a person should be, there was just something about his enthusiasm for it that made me identify less with it.

somehow in college with 'heart' it felt like, everyone knows this record, in a way that made the record seem more solid. but with 'nothing' it was like, everyone's listening to this record, and it made it more insubstantial.

man karl's post

I too am voting "Night Falls on Hoboken." Coming into the album as a superfan, I was a bit disappointed at first, I recall, and I certainly hadn't kept my listening-energy up enough to give much attention to the daunting final track on the first several listens. Then I and a few friends traveled to Nashville to watch them on this tour, and the live version of the tune immediately did something to me. It clicked. It may be my favorite YLT song period. Gonna pull this one out again soon and relisten.

First half of this album is undeniable.

Liner notes: "When in Nashville, visit Prince's Hot Chicken Shack."

I personally prefer Hattie B's, better sides imho.

We know what Springsteen would vote for.

Hint: Tears Are In Your Eyes

Here's the quote:I just recently discovered that and I just kind of recently got into them and they're fantastic.

Re-listened to this on the drive in a couple of mornings this week. A lot of it just goes by me. Too much or not enough, I don't know.

if i remember well, i loved this instantly. i bought it in the summer of 2000, the first summer in our new house. what a perfect album to listen to in summer nights. what a great, relaxed vibe. the kind of music which turns the world into a better, friendlier, more peaceful place. and the best about it, the music is never obtrusive, it modestly stays in the background, it just provides a soft cushion to make life a wee bit more comfortable, a bit lighter. i think my fave is either "tears are in our eyes" or the closer. that's what i'd call a flow... the tour to this didn't work so well though which was not really surprising. this stuff lacks too much in the dynamics department which in this case was lethal for the live performance. these days they don't make these kind of albums anymore, neither yo la tengo nor any other band i know of. it's a pity.

this was a bit of a letdown for me after 'i can hear the <3' but pretty much anything probably would have been. from 'painful' to that one is impeccable imo.

but age/circumstances-when-hearing is a big factor, and i'm kinda old. my personal moments came with 'i can hear the heart' more than 'and nothing'.

anyway, 'cherry chapstick'. the quiet songs are grebt, but i think they kind of run together without the rock.

(if someone polls 'summer sun' i will also hold forth about how much better the ep version of 'today is the day' is than the album version)

i vote the bridge on "Crying of Lot G"

Our Way To Fall.

This did feel like a bit of a letdown after the ridiculous hot streak of Electro Pura and I Can Hear.... But few bands ever get that good. 1997 was just the greatest year for music.

cherry chapstick! with Madeline and Last Days of Disco as close seconds. my second favorite YLT album (after Heart, perhaps i'm in my weepiness years.

deeper into movies kinda ~saved my lyfe~

I apologies if this is a bit too direct, but could you expand mookieproof?

My favorite Kael collection too.

Never cared much for YLT but "Let's Save Tony Orlando's House" is marvelous, outstanding

I love "The Crying of Lot G" because its subject is so common to anyone in a relationship but so rare in pop music--it's about two lovers fighting but there is zero chance of them breaking up. It's not melodramatic at all--it's just a married couple that are irritate with each other, just arguing the way people do. But there is so much love in the song. I practically want to cry at the end when they sing together, "the way that I feel when you laugh / is like laughing / the way that I feel when you cry / is so sad." That's it: that's love. Really simple, not melodramatic. That's long-term love.

I feel like I could vote for any song on this record. Kind of stunning that people have written off their work after this record...yeah, it's more of the "same", but it's a good sort of same.

Something about "The Last Days of Disco" is always very touching -- really dig on the lite space funk workout production. So good. Had to vote for it.

I love "The Crying of Lot G" because its subject is so common to anyone in a relationship but so rare in pop music--it's about two lovers fighting but there is zero chance of them breaking up. It's not melodramatic at all--it's just a married couple that are irritate with each other, just arguing the way people do. But there is so much love in the song. I practically want to cry at the end when they sing together, "the way that I feel when you laugh / is like laughing / the way that I feel when you cry / is so sad." That's it: that's love. Really simple, not melodramatic. That's long-term love.

― sctttnnnt (pgwp), Saturday, May 10, 2014 1:25 AM (12 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That's a good microcosm of YLT in general, I feel.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

This is my favourite YLT LP. While I like their noisier stuff, I love the sustained quiet & reflective (& romantic) mood of this album, and the many, many great guitar sounds.

"Everyday" is my track pick. "Summer's sad songs" seems an appropriate description of the whole LP - made for listening on warm summer nights with a light breeze coming through the open window. I've fallen asleep to this album a lot.

So interesting to hear what people's prime stretch of YLT is. I always related with the 1,2,3 of Electro-Pura, I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One and And Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out. I was always so conflicted with this one since it felt so mature and mannered (all descriptors of music that I never really appreciated, at least at the time) but I ADORED this album. Whoever upthread mentioned that it was such a perfect late-night album, is so right. I still can't find too many albums that can compete with this one in that respect, it feels like it was made for it. I listened to this album in college during innumerable all-nighters, always playing album after album looking for that right sound and this one never failed to hit me in the right places. Especially during "Night Falls On Hoboken" where it would just stretch out and disappear for stretches of time and I loved it for that.

I can't say enough wonderful things about this record. That cover is so appropriate and perfect.

Not sure what I would pick as a stand out. "Everyday" is so great. It starts off in the most simple and beautiful way. So sleepy. "Tears Are In Your Eyes" is so heartbreaking it veers on parody, but holy shit is it great. "Cherry Chapstick" is classic YLT in the best way. I'll probably pick "Night Falls..." just cuz I'm a sucker for their late-in-the-album long jams.

...and yeah, totally lost interest in YLT after this one. I thought the Nuclear War this was cool but, you know...

Initially, I had zero interest at post-And Nothing YLT but Fade easily won me over. Right away, I revisited the output from Summer Sun to today and to me they settled for quite good (instead perhaps Beat Your Ass, which is all I want after the sustained greatness of 1993-2001. By the way, The Today is The Day EP is the best thing from that period, the slow version of Cherry Chapstick is formidable.

debated between "our way to fall" and "saturday," wound up going with "fall"

wish the last three songs were cut off

Everyday, everyday

Saturday was always my favourite back in the day. i'll go with that.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

I think Cherry Chapstick is a terrific song but there are probably 6 or 8 songs is choose before that one--a testament to the quality of the album.

this is my favorite album

it's utterly perfect

The run from Painful to Sounds of Sounds of Science is still my favorite by any artist ever.

great album. weird poll results though! cherry chapstick always felt like a 'sugarcube' rehash to me, and my favorite tracks ('lot g', 'saturday') are toward the bottom!

great album. somehow i associate it with summer nights maybe due to the cover. when this came out we had just moved to our house on the countryside. on the tour this did not work as well as on cd. i almost fell asleep iirc. i think it is more of an atmospheric background album. not a lot happening really but that is fine. very nice music to fall asleep to.

q: is there a better bridge than the one in 'crying of lot g'?
a: no

(or would you call it the chorus, or coda, or what? the 'the way that i feel when you laugh is like laughing' part)

it would be a bridge if there was something that it connected to another verse or chorus, but as is, it's more of a coda, or perhaps an alternate chorus. but yeah, it's so good.

but to your question - "is there a better bridge than the one in 'crying of lot g'?" - there aren't many, but one example is on the same album (the "please tell me how you know tomorrow / staring at your shoes" section of "tears are in your eyes"), which without checking i know i've probably talked about in this thread multiple times. it always sticks with me

er d'oh, i meant the "Although you don't believe me, you are strong / Darkness always turns into the dawn / And you won't even remember this for long / When it ends alright" section from the same song, just before

I figured you meant that and yeah it's sublime too

I don't really like this band but "let's save tony orlando's house" is amazing

Liner notes: "When in Nashville, visit Prince's Hot Chicken Shack."

I personally prefer Hattie B's, better sides imho.

― Jersey Al (Albert R. Broccoli), Friday, May 9, 2014 9:21 AM (four years ago)

Man, I must have really got burned by Prince's around this time, because this is entirely shitty advice. They're both great (and yes Hattie B's sides are better), but Prince's is a fucking institution.

(my vote for "Last Days Of Disco" still stands, one of my top 5 YLT songs)

the crying of lot g is one of the most beautiful songs i've ever heard

my CD of this is lost, doubled up in some other CD case

I still keep the digipak in the hope that it will someday turn up when I play one of the thousand CDs it could be hidden in

20 years old.