Yo La Tengo

Each week, our man in Jersey offers a few good reasons to head across the Hudson

We got a little depressed leaving the beach in Asbury Park at the end of Labor Day, a holiday that signals, symbolically at least, the bittersweet end of summer. No more icy Coronas under the sun or blasting David Bowie with the car windows down en route to the Jersey Shore, we thought. Goodbye marathon barbecue sessions at our friends' parents' houses in the suburbs (especially the ones with in-ground swimming pools)! Sigh. But after we'd put our sandy beach chairs in the trunk of our Corolla for the last time, we remembered that there was still some summer fun yet to be had.  read more »

CONCERTS:

The Hold Steady have single-handedly turned “bar band” into a term of endearment. Blame it on frontman Craig Finn, whose half-sung, near-Joycean rants about drugs and alcohol and teenagers and Minneapolis and drugs are shot through with so much wit and wisdom they manage to turn bar chatter into a kind of high art. Anyway, without Finn—or with a lead singer who actually sung—the Brooklyn quintet would be little more than arena rock nostalgists churning out scads of decidedly uncool rock clichés (guitar solos, piano interludes) for middle-aged audiences. In other words, they’d be a bar band in the old sense. With Finn, though, all those dad-rock histrionics go down real easy.  read more »

Yo La Tengo, the lovable indie rock band from Jersey, will be getting adventurous with Greg Mottola, the director of Superbad and some episodes of Arrested Development. Pitchfork reports that they'll create the soundtrack for Mr. Mottola's new comedy, Adventureland, starring Ryan Reynolds (Van Wilder, Definitely, Maybe). According to IMDB, Adventureland is "centered around a recent college grad who takes a nowhere job at his local amusement park, only to find it's the perfect course to get him prepared for the real world." Sounds like familiar territory for Mr. Reynolds. We just hope there's a cute scene involving sleeping bags and b.f.f.'s proclaiming their love for each other. Boop!

Missing out on Yo La Tengo's yearly 8 Nights of Hanukkah residency at Maxwell's (tomorrow is the last night)? No worries! You can live/listen vicariously through the band's online diary of the events.

From the first night's entry, written by singer/guitarist Ira Kaplan:  read more »