Customer Reviews

Prisoners of Love: A Smattering of Scintillating Senescent Songs 1985-2003 [3 disc]

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Yo La Tengo is my favorite band. I own their first LP, Ride the Tiger, on vinyl (the rest of my collection is on CD). I've also seen them live about six times, and each show is different from the other (one show, in fact, was of them playing improvisational background music for a psychedelic light show). In fact, with Yo La Tengo, while some things - like the overall quality of their music, well demonstrated on Prisoners of Love, stays constant, other things - particularly their pioneering and experimentation-prone spirit - show constant growth and dynamism. Great musicians - be they the Who, Bob Dylan, the Beatles, Miles Davis, the Kinks, and Elvis Costello - all showed this dualistic quality. Just like Yo La Tengo.

What to say about this compilation? Essentially, it represents all the different phases of the band's career, from their start in the mid 80s as a slightly folky, sort of bouncy and quirky post new-wave rock act (along the lines of such bands as the Feelies, Bongoes, and DBs), to the bliss of their early 90s shoegazer phase (somewhat reminiscent of My Bloody Valentine and others), to various later melodic/sound experiments. What's also cool is that the songs are in no particular stylistic or chronological order. They're just there, and if the listener doesn't necessarily like the order, s/he can rearrange it (for me, though, it works just fine). Anyway, listening to these tracks, one hears various songs (Sugarcube, Big Day Coming, Lewis) in which the band rocks out. Others (Did I Tell You, Our Way to Fall, Autumn Sweater, etc.) are softer and quieter, and nicely balance things out.

As far as the Title - Prisoners of Love - I've thought about what it means, and I think that it is quite apt. It shows the kind of quirky, ironic humor the band is known for (their very name - associated with the haplessness and miscommunication of the 1962 NY Mets - is another example of this). However, there is also something more serious. Yo La Tengo is very much about love - for one another, for music, and for life. They must then see themselves as "prisoners" to this love, i.e., simply accepting it, warts and all, and going with it, allowing themselves to see where it takes them.

One last comment; The outtakes and rarities disk is really worth having. Much of it is of alternate takes on various songs they've recorded and released elsewhere, and in listening to these, one gets an even further sense of the pioneering and experimental spirit of a truly dynamic band. It also shows their willingness to cover everything from well known rock icons (like Stevie Nicks) to bands much more obscure than themselves (the Dead C anyone?) and to give their coverage that unique Yo La Tengo touch.

May they keep leading a path for indie rock for 20 more years!

For a newbie to YLT (myself included), this Collection is a great sampler (at a Great Price!) of the Band's Indie-Rock genius. However, given Ira's well documented Music Critic/Record Geek credentials, how come there's no notes in the accompanying booklet as to which tracks belong to which Lp's? Surely the folks at MATADOR could've kidnapped some slovenly Intern from Sub-Pop or Drag City to help out with some more Fleshed-Out Background Info for us, the uninitiated.

Worth it for the bonus disk alone! The third disk of rarities plays as good as any of Yo La Tengo's best albums (do we still call them albums anymore?). It flows from one song to the next, each song a standout on their own, the sum of it's parts (tunes, instrumentation, slow songs, fast songs, and a large dose of guitar blasts) works so well. My only complaint is the cardboard slipcase enclosing the three disks is so tight I could barely get the CD cases out, even more difficult to get the CD's back in the darned thing! The two CD best of plays just as well - this could be as much a contender for Desert Island Disk as Hear The Sound of Two Hearts Beating.

I bought this collection mainly for the disc of outtakes and rarities, being a long time fan of the band. That disc alone made it worth the price for me. For me it's great to hear alternate version of songs that I already know and love ("Big Day Coming", "Decora"), as well as outtakes and covers I hadn't heard.

What is great about the 2 disc retrospective is that songs from the begining of their career ("Lewis", "Barnaby Hardly Working", "Drug Test") sit along side songs that were released in the past few years with out sounding dated or out of place. That to me is the mark of a great band.

This is a great introduction to the band, and while there are a few songs I would have liked to have seen included, this is a great place to start if you're interested in yo la tengo.

Listening to this collection it's amazing to hear tracks from 1985 sitting comfortably beside tracks from 2002. Every song projects the warmth and orginality that is so prevelant in everything they've done. They just might be the quintessential indie rock band. Pick it up and see why they've been able to hold such a devoted fan base for 20 years. This is music that will be loved for years to come, if you've been missing out on Yo La Tengo it's time to do yourself a favor and check them out.

As a long time Yo La Tengo fan, I was never going to be impartial to this collection, but I can't believe how well the songs that I've loved from their previous albums are represented on this collection. That shows a certain objective quality to some of their work that you don't see in other bands.

Yo La Tengo have a hopefully melancholic (or is that melancholic hopefulness?) that is, for me, the mark of true indie rock, and nobody does the mood better than them.

The way Yo La Tengo does this to combine the dream pop guitar sound of nineties British bands with an alt-country melodic sense that always seems to fit.

If you're a fan of the band, you have this collection already, if you aren't, this is certainly a good place to begin.

My first YLT album and a great place to start. Great band. Everything the critics have been saying for years is true. Smart, edgy, deep-reaching, heartfelt sounds, more in the lineage of the Velvet Underground than the Beatles or the Stones in terms of their sound. Definately for grown-ups (I'm 52). If you've ever been at all curious about this band, just buy this. The sequencing is brilliant - the whole thing flows. enjoy!

Bought this as a gift, it's a great set for an introduction to the awesomeness that is YLT. The range of songs included samples a wide spectrum of their prolific body of work.

Yo La Tengo has reached the point in their career where it's hard to figure out where to start with their catalog. Thankfully, they've put out "Prisoners of Love: A Smattering of Scintilating Senescent Songs 1985-2003", perhaps as good an overview as anyone could hope to put together of the band.

Presenting over two hours of music-- the collection's pretty much got all the aspects of the band's sound-- grumbling, down alt-rockers ("Shaker"), fantastic, noisy pop songs ("Sugarcube", "Tom Courtenay"), bright, modern, edgy pop explorations ("Autumn Sweater"), folk excursions ("Stockholm Syndrome"), gentle ballads ("Little Eyes") and the truly bizarre ("Blue Line Swinger", "Nuclear War"). If you don't know what you'll think about the band, this is the place to start. It's where I started after half a decade of not knowing where.

This reissue adds a disc's worth of rarities-- 16 total tracks, mostly b-sides with five that were completely previously unreleased. Paired with Genius + Love = Yo La Tengo, you get pretty much the complete Yo La Tengo rarities, a nice feature for collectors. The material is of mixed value to a more casual fan, but does Yo La Tengo have many of those?

Bottom line, this is a fantastic set, well worth the investment. Highly recommended.

I agree with all the people that contend that the third disc of rarities is worth the price of the whole collection - but I'll go even further and say that the song "Mr. Ameche Plays the Stranger", is alone enough reason to shell out for this 3 disc set. I might also suggest playing it back to back with Sonic Youth's "Hits of Sunshine" for twenty minutes of sonic bliss.