Painful by Yo La Tengo

Yo La Tengo: Ira Kaplan (guitar); Georgia Hubley (keyboards, bass); James McNew (drums). Audio Mixer: Roger Moutenot. Recording information: Water Music. The musical evolution of Yo La Tengo continued on 1993's PAINFUL. The group's tendency to veer between soft-and-slow and hard-and-fast remains--as demonstrated in the two wildly different versions of "Big Day Coming"--but as whole, the record shows increasingly nuanced songwriting by Kaplan and Hubley and greater variety in their overall sound. The addition of organ provides another sonic dimension, evoking a mood of tender fragility on the love song "Nowhere Near" and adding a caustic urgency to "Sudden Organ." What's also notable here is that Yo La Tengo, who have always acknowledged the influence of both the old and the new, have begun to sound more and more like their influences. "From a Motel 6" with its soft, trance-like vocals and monolithic guitar attack eerily evokes the twisted '90s psychedelia of seminal British shoe-gazers My Bloody Valentin...