yo la tengo - ride the tiger

Ride the Tiger has a reputation for being of one of Yo La Tengo's worst albums, and is almost uniformly regarded as their most pedestrian release.  Both claims are spot on.  At best, it's a fun, catchy jangle pop album; at worst, it's an amateurish attempt at Replacements-style college rock, with Ira's trademark feedbac-addled guitar work lacking the gritty punch of their later albums.  It's okay.  Worth the occasional spin, but pales in comparison to any other record they put out.

Yet when you look at it for what it is, outside the overwhelming context of Yo La Tengo's prolific career, it's really a great album.

Bands like Yo La Tengo set the bar for themselves so high that even a great album sounds terrible compared to everything else.  The same case could be made for Pavement, the Replacements, the Beatles, the Magnetic Fields, Sonic Youth, etc.--bands that seem to create their own individual guidelines for criticism, because they're just that good.

If you took Ride the Tiger--or Terror Twilight or All Shook Down or Let It Be--and attributed it to some no-name rock band, it'd be hailed as a phenomenal debut, a sign of great things to come, etc.  Which is probably what happened to Yo La Tengo, until they surpassed that debut continuously for nearly 30 years and became one of the greatest rock bands of all-time.  It's a sad truth that bands of this stature are nearly impossible to review on a neutral level, but there are certainly worse situations to be in as a band.  Instead of these albums being received favorably, they're unanimously declared to be disappointments, let-downs, or mediocre efforts, simply because we know the band can do better.

As for Ride the Tiger, it's difficult to say exactly what makes it so underwhelming.  The overall sound is much more laid-back than your average YLT album, but they've successfully toned it down before (Fakebook, Summer Sun).  The absence of James McNew on bass is noticeable, but they managed to put out five great albums before his arrival, even if Ira maintains the band only "really started" with Painful in 1993.

The only real answer left is that the songwriting simply isn't that good.  There are a few songs here I love ("Five Years," "The Way Some People Day"), but even they are overloaded with a tame Americana gloss and obvious guitar hooks.  The filler on this album is arguably YLT at their absolute worst, and really the filler on any 90s EP is decidedly better than anything on Ride the Tiger.

Yet if you told me this was, say, a Feelies album, I'd tell you it was pretty damn good, a clear evolution from their bracing jangly guitar sounds, and some of the best songwriting they've ever done.  Expectations can be a real bitch.