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Yo La TengoPrisoners Of Love Matador/Remote Control/Inertia You like independent music, so you've doubtless heard a lot about New Jersey's hippest trio over the years. Every cool band seems to cite them as an influence, or at least wear their t-shirts in photos, and you think you'd probably like them, but when a flip through the Y section at your record shop of choice offers up over a dozen full-length CDs, mini-albums, extended EPs and collaborations it's hard to work out where to start. However, thanks to 'Prisoners Of Love' you now have a nice, solid best of that spans their scratchy beginnings in the mid-80s through to 2003's 'Summer Sun'. Unsurprisingly, it's just plain brilliant. It's also amazingly broad in scope, from the mad garage rock of The Story Of Jazz through to gentle, heartbreaking country on Tears Are In Your Eyes, the Flying Nun-esque scratch of Barnaby, Hardly Working and the uber-indie stomp of Shaker to the Sonic Youth fuzz-pop of Sugarcube and the syncopated rhythms of their cover of Sun Ra's Nuclear War. The only criticism I have, and it's a really subjective one, is that it's not in chronological order (hey, I like to follow a band's development with my compilations). Also, like Guided By Voices' 'Human Amusements At Hourly Rates' best of, it reveals a seam of great music and allows me to prioritise the YLT albums I have yet to buy, but it also shows their back catalogue as the work of a great band rather than the mystical alchemists of sound that I'd vaguely hoped they'd secretly be. Also, my review copy was the common-or-garden two-disc set rather than the fancy triple disc version with unreleased stuff on it (which I bet is chock-full of mystical sound alchemy). Whatever the case, you'll love this.  |
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