No Bad Blood About Pete Rose: Yo La Tengo at the Woodward Theater, Cincinnati, Ohio, March 25, 2025

About halfway through the sixth song in Yo La Tengo’s set, “Periodically Double or Triple,” at the Woodward Theater in Cincinnati, Ira Kaplan stopped, realizing he had yet to say hello. He said it had been awhile since they’d played in Cincinnati, claiming there was no bad blood about Pete Rose and the Mets (whose team members the Reds baseball player famously brawled with), and that he hoped there were no hard feelings from us about the disparaging things that Mets broadcasters have said about Skyline Chili. After we made peace with Yo La Tengo, our consciences clear, the band resumed their song as if they had simply pressed the pause button. I had barely noticed that the group had yet to acknowledge us, as I was already fully immersed in their presence. The band had opened with the title track of their most recent studio album, 2023’s This Stupid World. Georgia Hubley struck the drums with a soft mallet incessantly, driving the piece forward as Kaplan snatched the crowd’s attention with a noisy guitar introduction that grew from churning drone to feedback freakout, the instrument off his body by the end, banged on and shaken in the air as if to dislodge the tiniest crumbs of noise from its crevices.

Yo La Tengo added this concert to their touring schedule a couple months ago, a stop along the way to their appearance at the Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, Tennessee, where they were also set to collaborate with the Sun Ra Arkestra. In Cincinnati, the group didn’t sacrifice a second of rigor or intensity to save their strength for Big Ears. They put their all into an approximately two hour show spanning their dreamy acoustic numbers to eardrum-melting improv breakdowns. Kaplan, Hubley, and James McNew flitted amongst guitars, drums, and keyboards as if the stage was a bustling beehive, and Kaplan appeared to have an endless stream of guitars appearing from behind the curtain. I estimate maybe eight guitars total circulated throughout the evening’s frenzy, neither electric nor acoustic spared from the marks of fervor on their surfaces — chipped paint, long scratches, duct tape holding mechanics in place.

Even though Yo La Tengo’s sets were fairly choreographed with drone or noise transitions and instrument changes, the performance maintained a raw spontaneity. The amps were propped on top of drum cases, I could hear the moment when a pedal was turned on or off — they truly sounded like a band that never grew out of the indie, DIY spirit they started with. The highlight of the first set, which was primarily more acoustic, was “Miles Away,” the set’s closer. Hubley stood poised at the center microphone, her vocals drifting as ethereal, trance-inducing wisps. Her voice floated above the lush drone set by McNew and Kaplan, the latter’s guitar lines meandering one note at a time so each one could be savored.

During intermission, my friend marveled at how much Yo La Tengo’s performance sounded like their records, and yet they still preserved the mystery of how they created each moment. She said, “You can tell better how they’re making the sounds and yet it doesn’t take away any of the wonder I have when I hear the sounds. I know they’re using that kind of Casio, I know they’re using a twelve-string guitar, and yet I’m still surprised when I hear some of the sounds coming out of them.” My friend also noted the pair in front of us, languidly bending over at the waist and stretching their backs during the break — “This is exactly the crowd I expected at a Yo La Tengo show!” Upon inspection, I noticed the audience was a sea of mild-mannered, sweater-clad, Chucks-wearing individuals of all ages, myself included (although I ditched my sweater in the car for fear of overheating).

I was grateful to have traded a knit sweater for a baggy tee on the second half of the show, which leaned heavier into the ragged, electric side of Yo La Tengo. The group began with the This Stupid World opener, “Sinatra Drive Breakdown,” a new track I was eager to hear live. My pulse was thrumming even more than when I listen to the recording, which is saying quite a bit. Hubley laid into the snare drum which such ferocity, the hit snapping at my ears and recalibrating my body’s rhythm to hers. The whole noise improvisation put me in a hypnotic state, my attention solely pulled into the ensemble’s orbit. Not long after, the group performed a more keys-centric version of “Moby Octopad,” my friend content to watch McNew’s bass line loop in an ouroboros pattern on his fretboard while I witnessed Kaplan yank pedal knobs connected to the keyboard as he slammed on the keys. Up until this point, I had managed to listen to the performance without earplugs in, mainly due to the predominantly acoustic first half. But when the band extended the end of “From a Motel 6” so Kaplan’s guitar was screeching and howling by its conclusion, I scrambled for the earplugs in my pocket. By the penultimate song, “Ohm,” Kaplan’s guitar was completely out of his radius — he’d passed it on to a pair of teenage girls in the front row, who then sent the guitar crowd surfing, the instrument and its cable bobbing and dipping across the diligent fingertips of the audience until it wove its way back to the stage.

The final song of the set, “Blue Line Swinger,” captured the range and build Yo La Tengo is capable of. Beginning with the hazy, minimal guitar juxtaposed with the organ drone and pounding drum hits, Kaplan rocked back and forth on his knees as he played as if in prayer, presenting undying adulation for his instrument. The piece morphed into a barrage of noise, Kaplan throwing his guitar backwards and forwards behind his back before whirling it in one hand like a lasso, as if he could wrangle the feedback behemoth before him. After the show, I scrambled to find something for Kaplan to sign in the autograph line, and my friend suggested he sign my blog notes scrawled in my little pocket notebook. Upon handing the notebook to him, my friend translated the notes on the page which referenced his prayerful playing in “Blue Line Swinger,” and Kaplan replied with a chuckle, “Yeah, I’m praying a lot on stage.”

For me, Yo La Tengo goes back to when I was sixteen, watching Gilmore Girls on muggy summer nights and getting my hands on Yo La Tengo’s rendition of “My Little Corner of the World” after hearing it for the first time as the television show’s pilot episode faded to black. Reflecting now on their show in Cincinnati, “My Little Corner of the World” still perfectly expresses the warmth and closeness you experience when embraced with Yo La Tengo’s music. Tucked within the crowd in the small Woodward Theater, myself only a couple rows away from one of the indie rock guitar titans, so close I could see each riff tumble off his fingers, I reveled in that intimacy characteristic of a show in a smaller city.

In the front row were the aforementioned pair of teenagers with “I ♥︎ YLT” painted on their cheeks and a banner declaring “Cincy ♥︎ Yo La Tengo” in their grasps. With perpetual smiles, the pair bounced and sung out lyrics, hair flinging with each movement. Even though I stood there with my aching feet and work-worn attitude, with each song they brought out that youthful energy in me again. By the time “From a Motel 6” started, I was jumping just as high as they were, and I found I couldn’t stop, that teenage momentum descending upon my body again after years since it left with adulthood. Their presence reminded me of a time when every single note of music you listened to felt like you were the first person to ever hear it, when you shut the bedroom door and danced to that new record you’d discovered, eyes closed and secretly hoping no one would catch you, when every single concert you went to was your first this, your first that, when you embraced music without abandon because it felt like yours, and yours alone. Back in 2023, I reviewed This Stupid World for The Absolute Sound magazine, and I wrote, “This Stupid World conjures an uncontainable, giddy thrill that feels like hearing rock for the first time again, standing in awe of the craft, moved by the intricacy of the little moments.” On Tuesday, I witnessed this sentence materialized in the sense of wonder radiating from that pair of teenagers. Yo La Tengo can do that. A band that has been around for over forty years can make you feel like you were young only just yesterday.

– Hannah Blanchette

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  April 7, 2025  |  Blog