Yo La Tengo release 'We Have Amnesia Sometimes'

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.

What’s more, this weekend Ira, Georgia, and James will reconvene at their rehearsal space for two streamed concerts – on Saturday, July 18^th at 2am BST and Sunday, July 19^th at 6pm BST, under the name We Have Amnesia Live.

The sets will be unique 30-45 minute performances of music generated in the “formless” style of the Amnesia recordings. Tickets will be $10 and are available to purchase HERE. All proceeds from the event will benefit the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan law and policy institute fighting for democracy – to ensure our elections are fair, to end mass incarceration, and to preserve civil liberties.

This fall, Matador will reissue Yo La Tengo’s Electr-o-pura as part of our Revisionist History series. Now in a gatefold sleeve and cut from the original 58-minute master, the new reissue is pressed for the first time on two LPs to ensure the highest quality of audio the album has had on vinyl to date. Pre-orders for the new edition are available now via the Matador store HERE.