Rapid Fire Reviews: Beloved Indie with Belle And Sebastian, Yo La Tengo, and Tennis

Late Developers - Belle and Sebastian

There's a LOT of Belle and Sebastian music released over the years that I've enjoyed, it's just that not much of it has come out recently. I thought their 2015 album was just okay with the occasional big highlight and I felt pretty mixed on their trio of EPs in 2019 which I covered. I didn't even get the chance to review the album they dropped last year because I didn't have much to say about it and didn't see many people talking about it. Maybe it's just because it's early in the year, but this one seems to be attracting more attention so I didn't want to let it get past me. I did have a pretty negative reaction to the album when I first heard it last month but every time I revisited it I started to feel a bit more positive towards it one step at a time. The record's first two tracks are a good example, with the second one in particular, Give A Little Time, sporting an infectious guitar lead and some lovely vocal harmonizing. While I think the album also manages to end on a decent note in between the band dips into some of the corniest material I've ever heard them record. I don't want dip into the well of unnecessary pretension as a critic but some of the showtuney indie pop the shows up in the middle of this record just feels so cheap and silly. Not that Belle And Sebastian have ever been the most serious band in the world or that they even need to be now, I just can't really stand many of the places they go to during this record's middle run. At the very least they're flashing some more potential and I think the performances throughout the record are as appropriately professional as you'd expect from such a veteran act, but compared to much of their discography this still falls short. 5/10 

This Stupid World - Yo La Tengo

Much like Belle and Sebastian I have LOT of respect for a particular era of Yo La Tengo's career, in particular the 90s and early 2000s. My admiration of the bands work continued deep into their career and I was quite a big fan of their 2013 album Fade. Unfortunately, I wasn't crazy about their evocatively titled 2018 album There's A Riot Going On and though I liked their ambient follow-up a bit more, it's still been a full decade since I really liked a new Yo La Tengo album. On This Stupid World the band is certainly getting louder than they have been in recent years, but they don't let that drag the focus away from their patient compositions and wandering instrumental diatribes. Early tracks on the album like Sinatra Drive Breakdown and Tonight's Episode start the record off right but it maintains an element of sonic consistency through both the loudest and quietest tracks in the mix. Even when the album isn't demanding constant attention it still maintains interest through the cloudy atmospheres and dreamy. I also have a pretty strong appreciation for how creative the application of guitar distortion is on the record. Highlights in that regard include pretty much the entire opening track as well as Brain Capers which feels like a dramatic march to reach that destabilizing level of fuzzy noise. The title track revels completely in layers of distortion and ends up all the better for it, making the 7-minute runtime feel like more of a fluid haze than a rigid or god forbid predictable composition. I'm surprised but still very happy to report that I think this record is pretty good. If anything on it could be considered a weakness in my opinion, it's the first two singles. While this may be a pretty drastic change from the gentle slowcore of the last Yo La Tengo album I loved, it's a late-career burst of creativity whose exciting sonic texture reminds me of another album from a band that's been around. Spiritualized's Everything Was Beautiful. For a band this late in their career, This Stupid World is impressively bold and the results are exciting. 7.5/10

Pollen - Tennis

I've always thought of Tennis as quite a clinical music project. Not in the way that their sound is direct or contently serious but more that their ambition is purely to bang out a collection of catchy indie pop songs without anything too complicated like a concept muddying the water. That may not be the flashiest way to do it but it can occasionally pay off quite well, like when the album's opening track Forbidden Doors really grabbed me as a single and remains my favorite song on the album to this day. One thing that stuck in the back of my mind going into this album was the band's 2020 album Swimmer, which grabbed my attention when it launched with my favorite Tennis song to date Need Your Love. But once the full album arrived I was disappointed by its lack of instantaneously hooky tracks and generally bland sound compared to that kicking lead single. The record does a pretty good job at avoiding that out of the gate with a trio of good songs to start, though the more impressionistic style of One Night With The Valet doesn't really seem to fit the band and the song is over before it even starts. After the opening run the deep cuts are left to finish out the album and they do so somewhat admirably as a slightly inconsistent collection of the band's poised vintage style. Highlights from the second half include Pollen Song and Gibraltar even if for the most part none of the deep cuts make quite as much of an impact as the earlier points on the album. Pollen feels like a logical next step from Swimmer and I would argue it improves on that album's sound on almost all fronts. There is still a question of Tennis failing to conjure up the specific characteristics that set them apart from their contemporaries and the natural limitations of a sound so indebted to retro stylings. But Pollen is a catchy, well-performed, and largely quite enjoyable experience even if it isn't likely to leave the biggest lasting impression on listeners. 6.5/10