Consumer Guide Album

Yo La Tengo: There's a Riot Going On [Matador, 2018]
This inward-looking, barely verbalized album describes a parabola. Beginning with the hypnotic instrumental "You Are Here" and ending with the fragmented instumental-with-murmurs "Here You Are," it builds through five low-key songs to three six-minute instrumentals centered on the pulseless electronic "Shortwave," which reveals ionospheric subchatter when you turn the volume up, only why would you? Then come five less shapely songs, and there you are: in a time roiled by the political turmoil the title puts up front, a domesticated Yo La version of the kind of esoteric atmospherics I myself treasure in Hassell & Eno's Fourth World Vol. 1, Orüj Güvenc's Ocean of Remembrance, We's As Is, and Marcel Khalifé's Andalusia of Love. They mean to create not just music as a refuge, but recognizably indie-rock music as a refuge. "Shortwave" is too murky and cerebral. But "You Are Here" could open their sets forever, "Esportes Casual" is a perky relief, "Polynesia #1" makes me want to go, "For You Too" is my kind of love song, and "Forever" is my wife's. So yes, I find succor here. A-