Album Review: Yo La Tengo - This Stupid World

And you could, if you were so inclined, make an argument—and perhaps this is the kind of argument that has already been made, or has been articulated a little better by someone else, but the career of Yo La Tengo can be split into two distinctive parts: the formation of the band in 1984, leading up to the release of 1992’s May I Sing With Me, and then everything else over the last 30 years.

During the first eight years, the band allegedly cycled through 14 bass players, and throughout their early days, Yo La Tengo would often perform as a four-piece, including Dave Schramm on lead guitar. The band’s first four records, all really products of their respective times for myriad reasons, were released through various smaller imprints—their debut, Ride The Tiger, and its follow-up, President Yo La Tengo, were both issued on Coyote; Fakebook through Bar/None, and May I Sing on Alias. 

And you can hear glimmers, or quick flashes, of what Yo La Tengo would eventually go on to become in those early recordings, but subjectively speaking, and even objectively speaking (a quote from singer and guitarist Ira Kaplan confirms what has always been very apparent) the band really began working, or came into their own in terms of a huge leap in sound and dynamism, during the recording of 1993’s Painful—it was the first release through Matador Records (the label they are still connected with today), and it's first with bassist and multi-instrumentalist James McNew as a full-time member, who has remained with the group for the last three decades and 12 studio albums. 

A decade ago, upon the release of the album Fade—one of their most concise, focused, and inherently accessible in terms of arranging, a word I used to describe the band, and their output, and a word that had been more than likely used by other music writers, was “consistent.” 

There is, and has been for a while now, consistency with the music of Yo La Tengo.

Consistency in their lineup of McNew, Kaplan, and vocalist and drummer Georgia Hubley; consistency with the label they have remained signed to for their studio albums; and a consistency in how often one may anticipate a new album from Yo La Tengo—throughout the 90s and into the 2000s, they were delivering records roughly every two to three years. 

Following the release of Fade at the top of 2013, the band has been more inclined to take a little longer in between—Fade’s proper follow up¹, There’s A Riot Going On, arrived five years later, near the beginning of 2018.

And now another five years have passed.

There is a consistency, certainly, w/r/t the way the band operates, and sonically, at times, there is also a consistency, or at least a kind of reliability or familiarity. You can ultimately surmise what a Yo La Tengo album is going to sound like, but that does not mean that every Yo La Tengo album sounds the same. 

“Fearless” seems like the wrong word to describe Yo La Tengo, or at least how they write and record. Because I think rather than feeling unafraid, there is simply an overall lack of concern on the band’s part. It isn't that they do not care, or do not take things seriously, but there is this borderline freewheeling nature to the way they operate—a kind of “show up, and see what happens” mindset you can often hear within the music they have been making over the last 25 years for sure. 

I am also remiss to refer to the band’s sound as “restless,” because four decades into their career, that kind of a description implies that Yo La Tengo has never gotten comfortable with themselves or what they are doing as a group. 

But there is a refusal, I think, more than anything else, rather than a restlessness. 

The refusal coming from the feeling that they simply will not allow themselves to be just one thing, or to focus on just one aesthetic. If you were in a position where you would have to describe Yo La Tango’s sound, referring to them as “critical darlings” or “a long beloved outfit” paints a portrait but not a very vivid one. Yes, I suppose you can call them “indie rock” because they have been connected with independent labels their entire career; and yes, I suppose you could call them a “rock band,” because the music is often very guitar-driven, and is capable of being extraordinarily noisy.

But there is more to them, and their sound, than all of that. 

And there is something rather admirable and often beautiful about their refusal. They have trademarks you can hear in every record released since 1993, yes, and there are echoes of certain elements coursing throughout their canonical works, sure, but there is overall an unwillingness to remain with one sound, or idea, for too long.

However, within that beauty and admiration, there is also, at times, there can be the feeling of frustration.

*

Prepare to die. Prepare yourself while there’s still time—it’s simple to do.

I spent a lot of time, perhaps more than I should, or perhaps more than anyone should, thinking about time and mortality.

Specifically, my own time, and my own mortality, and where there is an intersection between the two. 

And I am uncertain why it did not resonate with me ten years ago—perhaps it might have, just slightly, and simply I do not recall now, but I am surprised that, at the time, I did not attempt to create some kind of flimsy correlation between Yo La Tengo, a band who were on the cusp of their thirtieth year upon the release of Fade, and myself, who was on the cusp of my thirtieth year of existence.

And it might not have even been something that would have been on my mind now, ten years later, had I not seen the enormous headline on Pitchfork for a profile and interview with the band: Forty Years In, Yo La Tengo Are Still Making It Up.

Forty years, I thought upon seeing the name of the piece splashed across the site’s homepage. That’s a long time.

That’s a long time to be a band.

That’s a long time to be in existence. 

*

And it is perhaps pedestrian of me to make a statement like “Yo La Tengo has always been there.” In a sense, it is true, or there is a truth to it. They have always been there during my lifetime—Kaplan and Hubley founded the band the year after I was born. But they have not always been there in the sense that my parents were certainly not playing records like Ride The Tiger or May I Sing With Me around the house while I was growing up.

This, at least up until a certain point in my 20s, was not music that I carried alongside me. 

I think that I first became aware of Yo La Tengo as a band around the release of their 1997 album I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One—more than likely seeing either the four-star review it was given in Rolling Stone when I was all of 14 years old, paging through the magazine when it arrived at my home, or at least seeing an advertisement for it in the magazine, or elsewhere, like an issue of CMJ that I had picked up at the local bookstore.

Or, maybe, it was the appearance of the self-aware, satirical video for the album’s blistering single, “Sugarcube,” starring a young David Cross and Bob Odenkirk, airing on an episode of the short-lived, often chaotic MTV program, “12 Angry Viewers,” where a room full of strangers were called upon to watch a handful of music videos, and vote on which one would make it to the network’s airwaves, and which would (allegedly) never be seen again.

And they were a band that I was, apparently, aware of for a number of years, but what I am uncertain of, and unable to recall, are the circumstances that led me to sit down and begin listening to Yo La Tengo in 2007—roughly a year after the release of one of their more commercially viable albums, I Am Not Afraid of You, and I Will Beat Your Ass (it made it onto the top 100 of the Billboard Album Chart the week of its release), the title itself a reference to a heated exchange between Tim Thomas and Stefan Marbury when they played together on the New York Knicks. 

It is perhaps pedestrian of me to make a statement like “Yo La Tengo has always been there,” but it is both true, and there is a truth to it. In arriving at their music when I did, I have been a listener for merely a fraction of their tenure, but their albums—in both following along with new subsequent full-lengths, and working through their sprawling back catalog, they are a band that even in the familiarity or specific aesthetic they bring to each record, continues to grow and challenge themselves as artists.

They are making the kind of records that I have assisted in my own musical growth, challenging myself to become a more thoughtful and analytical listener. 

*

You would have had me at the phrase “new Yo La Tengo album,” but you had me at this album’s title, regardless of who the artist behind it wound up being.

This Stupid World.

A spry nine songs, though many of them teetering into seven-minute territory, This Stupid World is not the group’s artistic response to the last three years—Yo La Tango’s pandemic album was released very early on in 2020, the experimental and instrumental Sometimes We Have Amnesia—but This Stupid World is a response, in a sense, to simply existing in the present day.

A response, in a sense, to the human condition—for better or worse.

Recorded and produced by the band, musically, the album began gestating during lengthy and often directionless jamming between the Kaplan, Hubley, and McNew—the sessions were all recorded, with the band eventually combing through hard drives full of material to find pieces that could be developed, sometimes with little effort, other times with quite a bit, into finished songs. 

And you can hear this kind of spirit within the songs found on This Stupid World. It isn’t the band’s most “experimental” album in terms of sound, but there is certainly their most raucous from beginning to end in a long time, with many of the songs having an untethered feeling coursing through them. More or less split into three distinct acts, even when the album switches tone rather dramatically at times, it is quite unsurprising that it doesn’t have a lack of cohesion to how it sounds, because Yo La Tengo has been pulling off a trick like that effortlessly for years. 

For a band that has been together for four decades, with the same lineup for three of those decades, Yo La Tengo have never felt the desire to reinvent themselves each time out—there is no need for them to. There is something refreshing, exciting, and at times, quite volatile about the material they’ve assembled for This Stupid World. And there are, of course, moments of familiarity, or things that are reminiscent of a song from their past—they are, if nothing else, incredibly consistent, and they have made a record that is, even in its refusal to adhere to one specific sound, or style, or level of volume, it is inherently a Yo La Tengo album—what that means is both understood and still extremely unpredictable. 

*

And when I think about Yo La Tengo, now, there is this lasting image that comes to mind first—before anything else important I associate the band with. 

The tour in support of There’s A Riot Going On began in Minneapolis, at First Avenue—dubbed “An Evening With Yo La Tengo,” the group, foregoing an opening act, played two distinct sets, each roughly an hour, with a quick break in-between. The first was decidedly focused on tunes that were much quieter, or reserved in nature—the gentlest side of the band possible, which leaned heavily into material from Riot, as it is, overall, one of their more reserved outings. The second hour emphasized just how loud and dissonant the band was capable of being—never a “hits” driven band, Yo La Tango’s most well-known songs are often among those that are ramshackle in nature, barely held together by the torrential, snarling electric guitar from Kaplan, like “Sugarcube,” “Double Dare,” and “Decora.”

It is perhaps audacious to some, but common for longtime fans of the band, to understand how their records are paced—they do, often, open with a difficult and/or lengthy track—the band’s second set of that evening in March of 2018 concluded with a ferocious version of “Pass The Hatchet, I Think I’m Goodkin,” the sprawling, 10-minute song that opens I Am Not Afraid of You—an unrelenting, jangly rhythm, a fuzzed out bass lick that surges throughout, and a lot of instrumental breaks full of squalling guitar feedback.

And maybe they didn’t stretch it out beyond its 10 minutes—maybe it just felt like that since I was seeing it unfold right in front of me, and the lasting image I have is of Ira Kaplan literally torturing an electric guitar—slamming it around his body on stage, shaking the life out of it, pulling otherworldly bursts of noise from it, with drops of sweat flying off of his brow, across the stage, while he did it—before taking the guitar off, handing what was left of it to a member of their road crew, and then putting on another guitar, and coming back into the song.

This Stupid World opens with a ripple of feedback—and at seven minutes in length (one of three songs on the album that are), “Sinatra Drive Breakdown” doesn’t exactly set the stakes for the album, since it does continue to shift and find ways to cram itself into other sonic spaces, but it does channel that kind of chaotic ferocity that the band, even after four decades, very easily conjures in their music.

After the feedback ripple surges through the atmosphere, “Sinatra Drive” is propelled forward unrelentingly by Hubley’s work on the drum kit—quite literally never breaking the rhythm, and between it, and McNew’s thick, rumbling bass guitar struck plucks, there is something hypnotic that swirls underneath the song, even if it spent its first 80 seconds with Kaplan bashing the shit out of a guitar, creating a dissonant wall of noise before he and Hubley blend their voices—not in harmony, but simply singing together, as they often do, with their vocals intentionally low and buried in the swirling of the music that surrounds them.

And there is something—there has always been something, really—soothing, or calming, in a way, about Hubley’s singing voice. All three members of the band contribute lead vocals at one time or another on every album, and she does not serve as a foil to Kaplan, but it does create a fascinating contrast—gentle, often quiet, arriving in a kind of haze—when she sings against music that can be rather brash.

I am remiss to say something like Yo La Tengo are not a “lyrics” band or that the writing itself takes a backseat to the band’s musicianship or arranging, because the group has penned rather poignant songs in the past—but they are, perhaps, a band that is not thought of for their lyricism first. Hubley’s and Kaplan’s vocals are low on “Sinatra Drive,” with Kaplan’s pushed just a little higher, and Hubley creating a lower, dreamier echo underneath—and through the fuzzed-out guitar and unrelenting bass line, there is one line in the song that was easier to pick out than the others: “Until we all break.”

This Stupid World was announced in November, alongside a lengthy spring tour in support of it, and a single—“Fallout,” the album’s second track. And, similarly to Yo La Tengo not being the kind of band that puts more of an emphasis on their lyrics over the overall feeling, or world of the song, they are not a band that has ever been very interested in creating a “hit” single—singles are often released from their albums, yes, and the songs that are picked are often the more accessible, and more infectiously written (this is still pop music at the end of the day), and so it makes sense that “Fallout” would be selected as the first thing for people to hear from the new album—riding waves that echo the band’s more rollicking, noisier songs from the past like “Sugarcube” specifically, or “Cherry Chapstick,” from And Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out.

There can, and often is, a penchant for self-indulgence on Yo La Tengo albums—their 2009 effort, Popular Songs, ends with songs that are nine, 11, and 15 minutes respectively, in length. And while the band never directly steers This Stupid World into a place that requires that much patience on behalf of the listener, there are, as one might expect, moments that are slightly less accessible to a casual listen than others. “Fallout,” however, is not one of those moments, and neither is the second single released ahead of the record in full, the gentle “Aselestine.” 

Buried underneath the fuzz and noise on “Fallout,” there is a melody somewhere if you focus in on it—and there is, for even as rollicking of a tune as it is, something surprisingly melancholic present as the elements are thrown together, which makes for a stark, fascinating contrast between the snarling electric guitar work and bashed out rhythm, where at times the song does begin to, musically speaking, soar, and the subtle, somber, and startlingly bleak nature of the lyrics. 

“Makes me sick—what’s in my mind,” Kaplan sings in “Fallout”’s third verse. “It’s so hard to react in kind. I want to fall out of time,” he continues. “Turn back, unwind, before the whole thing sparks….”

*

There is a multitudinous nature to nearly every Yo La Tengo album, especially the efforts they have released over the last 30 years with McNew as a permanent member and doing a lot more for the arranging and textural elements of the band than just playing the bass—they can be loud, yes, but they can also operate from a place that is surprising in how delicate it can be.

They also, 40 years in, have not lost their sense of humor.

This Stupid World’s middle half is based around the band working within a place of thoughtful reserve—there’s a playful, jaunty nature to “Tonight’s Episode,” which features McNew on lead vocals. Hubley never lets up on the rhythm coming from a snappy, crisp-sounding drum kit, while Kaplan manages to pull a wave of borderline ominous-sounding feedback through the beginning of the song, where it fights for its place against McNew’s bass groove, while he calls out, of all things, the name of yo-yo tricks during what serves as the chorus. 

On “Aselestine,” the tone shifts even further inward—it is the first song that Hubley sings lead on, and her quiet vocals create a hazy, dream-like feeling that spills into the song’s instrumentation—much tamer in comparison to how the album begins, there is a twangy sense of melancholy that swirls around alongside the folksy strum of the acoustic guitar, and, again, very crisp, sharp production values on the drum kit which keeps a steady, albeit slower, rhythm shuffling underneath all the layers.

Lyrically, Hubley’s words tumble out in abstract fragments—vivid enough that you can almost grasp onto something, but still vague enough that a portion of the story is left in the shadows, which here, works as an effective tool to create an additional layer of haze within “Aselestine”—the lyrics matching the gentle, bittersweet sensation of the music.

“Aselestine, where I go,” Hubley explains quietly in the second verse. “The drugs don’t do what they said they’d do.”

This quieter, or at least more reserved portion of This Stupid World ends with “Apology Letter,” which, like “Fallout” and “Aselestine,” is built with a little more of a traditional structure to it in terms of verse/chorus/verse, but also a more apparent melody that Kaplan follows with his vocals. It is also tonally—like, quite literally how it was engineered—is among the most distinct, with the rhythm that Hubley keeps from the drum kit sounding like just a gentle tapping that is not given an opportunity to become much more than that.

Kaplan’s electric guitar here is free from the cavalcade of effects pedals it is usually filtered through—there isn’t a flatness to it exactly, but it is very pristine in how it resonates with a little bit of warmth through the atmosphere of the song—the atmosphere itself punctuated by this watery, warbly sound that slowly pulsates through, making this one of the more densely textured songs on the record.

It is well known—I think it is, anyway, that Kaplan and Hubley were romantically involved when Yo La Tengo was founded in 1984 and that they have been married for several years, and so if, and when, a song by the band seems like it is on the cusp of being a little more personal, or there is an off-stage “you” that is being addressed when one of them is taking the lead, I often wonder how much of themselves, or their relationship, they put into their music.

And I wonder this based solely on one of the lyrics—one that, as you might anticipate, did really resonate with me, from “Apology Letter”: “I got mad ‘cause you got mad—another one of my delightful quirks….What a jerk.”

*

With the structure of This Stupid World being split more or less into thirds, in terms of songs that have similar aesthetics—the first being the most discordant, and the second being the most restrained—the final portion of the record isn’t exactly “a little bit of both,” or, like, the place where those two extremes wind up converging, but rather it is the place where Yo La Tengo really push themselves well beyond what you might expect to hear from them.

“Brain Capers,” the album’s track, ushers in the final third—and it begins with a bit of a bait and switch; opening with a quiet, atmospheric sequence of fluttering noises, those textures quickly disappear and are replaced, with the song becoming decidedly brash and straightforward in terms of its aesthetic. Akin to a kind of ramshackle, garage rock sound, the vocals of “Brain Capers” are intentionally muffled and mixed in low, tucked underneath the chugging bass line, thundering percussion, and layers of fuzzed-out guitar chords and solos that carry it all the way through til it all just evaporates into the ether at the end.

This Stupid World concludes with the album’s most experimental piece—and possibly one of the more electro-infused in execution in the band’s canon. “Miles Away” doesn’t sound out of place—it just just a surprise in how it is punctuated by a glitchy drum machine rhythm, and a moody, glacially paced droning sound that creates beautiful, albeit haunting waves that are utterly hypnotizing to hear. 

With Hubley singing lead one last time before the album ends, her voice still arriving in a dreamy haze, her lyrics delivered in a low and delicate tone, like a reassuring, comforting squeeze on the wrist from a friend—all of the elements slowly tumbling together before the album gently releases you into the night.

*

My friend Alyssa regularly tells me she believes I am good at titling things—most often, the titles of essays, or longer, reflective pieces I have written about an album celebrating a milestone anniversary.

I responded by telling her I appreciated the compliment, but I up until she said this to me for the first time, I had not given much thought, either way, at my ability to come up with a title for something. Rarely, if ever, do I go into something with the title in mind—it often comes to me once I have begun making my way through what I want to say, but more importantly, how I want to say it. 

The title, often a reference to something within the larger context, or the conceit, of the pieces, then often comes to me—not in any kind of grand, revelatory way, but a slow reveal when I understand why it would make the most sense.

An album’s title can come from myriad places—sometimes it is as simple as the name, or a variation on the name, of the artist responsible; sometimes it is pulled from a lyric found among one of the songs included within; other times, it shares its name with one of the songs among the album’s tracklist.

The “titular track.”

Yo La Tengo, up until the arrival of This Stupid World, have apparently never written a titular track—here, sequenced as the penultimate moment on the album, it is this collection’s most unrelenting, impressive, and antagonistic sounding—and even for a band that has crafted a storied history for itself through the use of effects pedals and noise, “This Stupid World” is without a doubt one of the heaviest tracks they have recorded.

And I am uncertain at what point, over the last decade of music writing, my process became so involved, but within the last three years, for sure, I have found that before I am even able, to begin with, my fingers on the keyboard, writing about an album in earnest, I need to sit with it through multiple listens—one of which dedicated to simply listening, and taking it all in, with a subsequent time through for taking notes about specific details or observations.

I understand that there are a lot of people who are involved in the arts—regardless of what kind of art—who adhere to the belief that they are most creative, or find themselves able to be the most creative, at specific times of the day. Over the last decade, I don’t think I have fallen into that kind of a routine—I often write as I am able, in moments when I both feel up to it, or moved to do so, when I am able, and the time of day is something I rarely take into consideration.

In the evenings, as of late, my wife will watch television before we both respectively fold ourselves into bed—I am hardly ever interested, even in passing, in watch she is watching, but in the effort to spend time with her, and our dog, who often wiggles and nestles himself between us on the couch, I will stay in the living room while the television is on, doing something that allows me to also have my headphones in.

During my initial pass-through of This Stupid World, intended for listening only, and not really jotting down any serious notes about the album, without really realizing what I was doing, or how distracting it might have become to my spouse, it was pointed out to me that during my listen of the album’s titular track—one of the lengthy, seven-minute songs included—that I had shut my eyes, and began nodding my head rather furiously to a rhythm that only I could really hear.

“Everything alright over there?,” my wife asked at one point, surprised at just how long I continued to somewhat aggressively and unwaveringly not my head in time. “You’re really getting into whatever you’re listening to.”

This stupid world is killing me.

This stupid world is all we have.

And, yes, you had my attention at “new album from Yo La Tengo,” and regardless of who was responsible for it, you had me with the album’s title.

The album’s titular track, thankfully, lives up to the expectations set by its name.

“This Stupid World” is, putting it mildly, hits you like a torrential downpour that seems like it is never going to end, but it is also so enrapturing in the sensations it creates, you ultimately never want it to end.

Opening with the most snarling squall of guitar feedback present across the album, which Kaplan manages, with ease, to sustain and bend to his will throughout the entirety of the song, a thick, rumbling kick drum keeping a surprisingly quick tempo finds its way through the noise, alongside the occasional hit of another drum and the rattling of a tambourine—all of it crunchy and distorted beyond a breaking point.

It’s nearly three minutes in when the vocals arrive, and again, as it is on a majority of This Stupid World, they are tucked further into the mix, creating the feeling that they are intended not to be the focus of the song, or something to pull your attention away from the sensory overload of “This Stupid World” as a whole piece.

Seven minutes may seem like it is entirely too long to commit to something like “This Stupid World,” specifically with how noisy it is, but moves along so quickly—never even stopping to take a breath, or switch direction in the slightest—so when the kick drum eventually just stops, it’s quite startling that the song has arrived at its end, and seemingly so quickly.

It’s startling because even in all that dissonance, there is something comforting and mesmerizing about it—it pulls you in, and in letting it wash over you, all you can do is nod your head feverishly in time with the rhythm, clearly making out the lyrics that, ultimately, are the most resonant.

This stupid world is killing me.

This stupid world is all we have.

*

There is a point midway through This Stupid World where the album doesn’t so much lose its momentum or become slightly less compelling, but it does stumble slightly within “Until it Happens.” The song itself is fine—not bad, or unlistenable by any means, but musically the arranging (strummed acoustic guitar, a bit of an unmelodious organ note that continues throughout) is one of the few moments that failed to really make a connection with me as I listened. 

However, the lyrics that Kaplan sings, certainly did.

“Prepare to die. Prepare yourself while there’s still time—it’s simple to do.”

I spent a lot of time, perhaps more than I should, or perhaps more than anyone should, thinking about time and mortality.

Specifically, my own time, and my own mortality, and where there is an intersection between the two. 

And even if it had resonated with me ten years ago—Yo La Tengo, a band entering their thirtieth year with the release of Fade, me, entering into my first year of music writing on the cusp of my thirtieth year of existence—even if I had wanted to, I am uncertain if I would have been able to create the correlation—flimsy or otherwise—between all of those things.

I do not think, a decade ago, I was a capable enough writer. 

And that is one of the few things about time—my own time, specifically—when I think about how it has passed, that I am able to reflect on and try to appreciate. 

I think about all the ways I have grown—as a person, certainly, but within this craft that, despite all of the moments when it would have been easy to walk away, I have continued to develop.

I continue to try. 

We are all trying, really. 

This stupid world is killing me.

You could make an argument that the career of Yo La Tengo can be split into two distinctive parts—the formation of the band in 1984, leading up to the release of 1992’s May I Sing With me, and then everything else over the last 30 years.

Forty years is a long time to be in a band.

Forty years is a long time to be in existence.

This stupid world is all we have.

We, hopefully, never stop growing, or evolving, in what we do—like, what we consider our craft to be, but also as individuals. The way that I have been writing—the work leading up to how I think about music, and music analysis over the last three years, might very well not be how I write in another five years from now.

The person that I am now is not the same—not really, anyway—as who I was a decade ago as I entered my thirtieth year. 

The person that I will be in another decade will be different than who I am right now.

And there is, of course, the consistency in Yo La Tango’s output over the last 30 years—their lineup, their label, how often (give or take) a new album is released, and a consistency in the band’s overall sound—familiar in the sense that you can ultimately surmise what a new album by the band is going to sound like, but that doesn’t mean that every album by Yo La Tengo sounds the same. 

Forty years is a long time to be a band, and thirty years is a long time to be a band comprised of the same lineup—and This Stupid World continues Yo La Tango’s trajectory of refusing to make records with just one sound, to be just one thing, or focus on just one aesthetic. Much more blistering than one might anticipate from an album released this far into the band’s career, it is an immersive and invigorating album, filled with a surprising poignancy, and sonically constructed in a way that is all too easy to become entranced by. 

^{1- It is a “studio album,” but I will argue that the band’s 2015 album, Stuff Like That There, which was primarily comprised of covers and a handful of acoustic re-workings of their own material, is not really canon.}

This Stupid World is available on February 10th via Matador.