Yo La Tengo vs the Teenettes

It's February. It's dreary month. It's like an eternal drab Tuesday stretched out to interminable lengths by the lingering phlegm of winter. It's getting warmer and the days are getting longer but it's still cold and dank and the world is still essentially black and white and whatever color you want to describe dirty snow. There's yet the hope of Spring and currently the reality of thawing temperatures that reveal an astounding amount of dog turds that the snow has been concealing for the last few months.
February. I'm not a fan.



1. Walking Away From You
2. Cast A Shadow

So it's with this in mind and because it's been gray and damp and I need cheering up and something hearty to eat and have little desire to do much but maybe nap or watch Family Feud (which is pretty similar in terms of cranial activity.) that I present a couple of things that make me happy. Well, happier. Momentarily, at least. This Yo La Tengo came out in 1991 and preceeded "May I Sing With Me" if my memory is correct. (Doesn't matter. Both songs were collected on Genius + Love = Yo La Tengo. )
However this single makes me happy. Well, half of it does. "Walking Away From You" is one of those pretty typical YLT songs of the era. A bit of feedback, slightly meandering, a couple of hooks and a lyric that may or may not be about an old girlfriend. It's alright. Better than a lot of stuff, but not really special in terms of the YLT catalogue.
It's the b-side cover of "Cast a Shadow" as originally recorded by Beat Happening that's the real gem. Freed from the naive primitism of Beat Happening the song glows from within. Just pure and simple and lovely chiming sunny pop. It pleases me.



1. I Want a Boy with a Hi-Fi Supersonic Sterophonic Bloop Bleep
2. From the Word Go

Late 50's Major Label Novelty tune with a pre-fab girl group and the faintest whiff of Rock and Roll, but nothing too unsavory. Good and wholesome and clean it is. No self respecting teen with a lick of sense would have thought much of it. This is the sound of the wasteland of popular radio in the late 50's for anybody not hip to the amazing things Jazz was doing before Rock and Roll reasserted and insinuated itself in the popular culture a few years later(while Jazz was led to the wilderness and abandoned by the British Invasion.).
Half a century later I can at least appreciate it for what it is. A pleasant novelty tune. A pair of them. I picked it based soley on the title of the A-side. I was not disappointed.