Consumer Guide Album

Yo La Tengo: This Stupid World [Matador, 2023]
It may seem perverse to quote an entire stanza of an all too jam-heavy nine-track album five years in the waiting, but that stanza is quintessential: "I was wrong/I knew right away but I played it cool/That trick never works/Took too long/And then I got mad because you got mad/Another one of my delightful quirks/What a jerk." If Ira has a message to the world, that sums it up even better than Inspirational Verse we should be glad comes in the middle: "Prepare to die/Prepare yourself while there's still time." B+