In case you haven’t caught on already, Yo La Tengo have spent the week quietly seeding the web with new music — posting one song a day via their freshly minted Bandcamp page.
Today, we’re gathering it all into a single tidy zip file: We Have Amnesia Sometimes. This digital collection features five instrumental compositions that Georgia Hubley, Ira Kaplan, and James McNew recorded over 10 days in late April and early May during socially distanced sessions at their rehearsal space in Hoboken, NJ. A vinyl edition will be available at a later date on Bandcamp via Egon, pre-order HERE.
Improvisatory and atmospheric, the music expands upon the moods and processes that informed the trio’s now-more-timely-than-ever 2018 full-length, There’s a Riot Going On.
If you’ve spent any time hanging out with us at our rehearsal space in Hoboken — that pretty much covers none of you — you’ve heard us playing formlessly (he said, trying to sidestep the word “improvising”). Most of the songs we’ve written in the last 25 years have begun that way, but often we do it for no other reason than to push away the outside world.
In late April, with the outside world weighing on everybody, we determined that the three of us could assemble in Hoboken without disobeying the rules laid out by Governor Murphy, and resumed . . . “practicing” hardly describes it, because we’ve done no practicing per se, and anyway what would we be practicing for . . . playing. James set up one microphone in the middle of the room in case we stumbled on something useful for the future. Instead we decided to release some of the things we did right now.
— Ira
Initially exclusive to Bandcamp, We Have Amnesia Sometimes is today available to experience via the DSP of your choosing.
