Hear Yo La Tengo’s New Ambient Song

Yo La Tengo released a new ambient track, “James and Ira demonstrate mysticism and some confusion holds (Monday),” and launched their Bandcamp page.

The nearly six-minute track, which cycles between a pair of droning chords, emerged from an loose collaboration between Ira Kaplan and James McNew in the band’s Hoboken, New Jersey rehearsal space.

“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”),” Kaplan wrote in a statement on Bandcamp. “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.”

He continued, “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 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 something we did right now.”

“James and Ira” follows the band’s 15th studio album, 2018’s There’s a Riot Going On. The indie-rock trio will reissue 1995’s Electr-o-pura on September 4th to mark the LP’s 25th anniversary.

Yo La Tengo recently contributed the holiday song “Eight Candles” to a Hanukkah album also featuring Haim, the Flaming Lips and Jack Black.