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the riley rock reportthen meets now Author: Tim Riley
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Yo La Tengo's Textbook Snoot
Friday, 30 January, 2026
Drummer Georgia Hubley turns 66 on February 9, a convenient excuse to plug a favorite covers album that vies with the best. Fakebook's map points every which-way but weak, done respectfully but without pretense or caution, and shared like a favorite quilt. I wrote it up for the Phoenix in 1990, before used records stores started to feel nostalgic… PEOPLE STILL COMPLAIN that they "can't understand pop lyrics," another way of asserting that Tin Pan Alley lounge-bar standards will forever outclass that noisy rock and roll. Not so. What the nay-sayers overlook is rock's song catalog, which is not only sturdy but flexible and overripe for singers to raid.Most acts use cover records to kill time (Todd Rundgren's Faithful), pay respects (Metallica's Garage Days Revisited), or tout range (Siouxsie and the Banshees' Through the Looking Glass), instead of refurbishing guilty pleasures that send you gushing back to the source and digging out your Flamin' Groovies collection. But the thesis behind Yo La Tengo's insinuating summer sleeper Fakebook is that even stooge records (like The Flying Burrito Brothers’ 3rd) have silver linings. Even some of the album's original electric haunts (like "Barnaby, Hardly Working") go down as hushed revelations. Fakebook is a soft-focus record that reveals its edge in dark whispers. Georgia Hubley never uses more than brushes on her snare and cymbal, Ira Kaplan strums a rather stiff acoustic six-string, and Dave Schramm places his bittersweet steel-guitar touches with the care of acupuncture needles.Rock liberated the singer (Dylan, Hendrix, Rotten), and as Kaplan shows, you don't have to be a crooner to master the soft touch. Kaplan's wobbly self-consciousness imbues these songs with just the right inward momentum. It's as if they set out to make a record-length version of "Alyda," the gentle ebb-and-sway duet that made last year's President Yo La Tengo such a knowing dialogue between electric fallout and acoustic repose.Bright shiny ideas straight to your inbox. Click like the wind! Like any former rock critic, Kaplan has a record jones, and his vinyl pancakes don't just sit there. Kaplan is such a Mets fan that he named his group (which also includes Al Greller on upright bass) in honor of the team's original shortstop, Elio Chacón, who yelped out "Yo la tengo!" ("I got it!") every time he went after a pop-up. To confront the critic-wannabe cynicism, Kaplan plugged in and retooled himself into a guitar hero of fierce proportions. Just listen to "Orange Song" on the newly available CD of President Yo La Tengo/New Wave Hot Dog, which includes their 1987 single "The Asparagus Song" backed with Neil Young's "For the Turnstiles."Hubley has such a natural way with a song that it's clear Kaplan's sponging vocal ideas off of her—rock critic marries female drummer and learns how to sing.Yo La Tengo shows have always been known for pushing past this nice Jewish boy's intellect and heading straight for Dante's playground. And live, the band excel with covers, which are often textbook-snoot: Bob Dylan's "I Threw It All Away," Neil Young's "Turnstiles," and Lou Reed's "It’s Alright (The Way That You Live)." Each a map for how non-singers can inform outré lyrics, they also model rock's un-hedging credo of mood over meaning. Fakebook combines arguments: Kaplan adopts an unassuming, non-singer delivery style that makes you sit up and listen, and he's put together a set of songs that sound like instant classics. Not only does Kaplan's drummer wife, Hubley, sing more on this record (on Kaplan's "What Comes Next?" and NRBQ's "What Can I Say?"), but some of the best moments come during their duets. And Hubley does more than give Kaplan something steady to work off: She has such a natural way with a song that it's clear he's sponging vocal ideas off of her—rock critic marries female drummer and learns how to sing.On paper, you have to give Kaplan's taste the benefit of the doubt; he'll do a song by Cat Stevens if he likes it ("Here Comes My Baby," a hit for the Tremeloes in the '60s). And he redeems the home-made credulousness of "Speeding Motorcycle" by Daniel Johnston (Seattle's Jonathan Richman, only simpler). But when you hear Ray Davies' "Oklahoma, U.S.A.," you'll swear you've heard it before and pray that it's on your Kinks Kronicles. (It's not.) For frat hazing, there's "Emulsified," a "Monster Mash" clone by the Mighty Cravers that turns its source into as essential a collection as Nuggets (the At the Party compilation, on Candy Records). And "Yellow Sarong" will lead you to raid your friends' stash for anything by The Scene Is Now.It's not jazz standards that are dead, it's lounge bars. And if people do still want to go out and hear the old tunes, these are the ones they'd rather hear, even if they've never heard them before. Fakebook isn't just an album for fans, like Joan Jett's The Hit List. It's a record about fandom that sends you packing to the used record store.the tunes we carryhttps://music.apple.com/us/playlist/the-february-thang-riley-rock-booth/pl.u-Xy3JfZYgZMzVisit the new playlists page, with monthly custom threads and archival anomalies, including: a Willie Nelson Stardust Deluxe that sews up all the old stuff nicely, a Beck roundelay that lives up to his haircut, and more…noises off* From the archives: Jimi Hendrix Meets the BBC, Peter Carlin nails Springsteen to the cross, and the Simpsons transcend their worst prophecies…* Coming soon: Peter Richardson’s new book, Brand New Beat, on the history of Rolling Stone Magazine* riley rock index: obits, bylines, youtube finds, reference sites, pinterest, beacons.ai, random deep link This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rileyrockreport.substack.com
