The Freewheelin' Yo La Tengo

Hyperbole: Yo La Tengo is the best band of all-time. Not hyperbole: Yo La Tengo played at the Lakeshore Theater last night as a part of their Freewheelin’ tour, and they were totally awesome. Basically, Messrs. Kaplan, McNew and Madam Hubley sat down before a packed crowd and played acoustic versions of their songs from their extensive discography and cover songs for an hour and a half, bantering in between and answering questions from the audience. (I would have taken pictures, but security threatened to take away cameras and I couldn't figure out how to turn the flash off on my friend's camera. Boo.)

They opened with “Big Day Coming” off their 1993 album Painful, but I didn’t get excited until their stripped-down cover of “My Little Corner of the World”, which is my favorite song in their catalogue. The only notes I took down during the song were “My little corner!!!” and “Whistle solo!” because during the song’s normal guitar solo, the sound guy came on stage and whistled a perfect version of it, drawing rabid applause. (Check this song as set to a wicked Gilmore Girls montage:

Most of the songs came from their covers album (Fakebook), their masterpiece (I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One) and their most recent offering (I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass), and one of the highlights was an insane version of “Pass the Hatchet, I Think I’m Goodkind”, the opening track from the latter. Even though they were mostly unplugged and toned down, guitarist Ira Kaplan let squeals of feedback reverb from his acoustic guitar, using a plugged in distortion pedal to replicate the song’s waves of noise. Who knew you could shred while sitting down? Another highlight was "Black Flowers," which had Kaplan harmonizing the trombone part that's on the recorded version of the song.

The band got their name from a baseball slang, so naturally, Kaplan brought up the epic collapse of his New York Mets at the end of the concert, then speculated over who had it more painful: Mets fans or Cubs fans (the answer: Cubs fans). This was before launching into one of their encore songs, “For the Turnstiles” by Neil Young. It was the second Young song heard that evening, as opener Rick Rizzo covered “Through My Sails” as well. Since Neil Young is awesome, this was pretty good. They finished playing around 9:30 and would play a second set an hour later, presumably drunker and more loosened up. In retrospect, we probably went to the wrong show.

Best line of banter: Ira Kaplan: (about a Dead Boys show he went to) "Cheetah Chrome did perhaps the most punk rock thing I've ever seen, which was to play this show wearing a sweater."

Set List (what I took down, anyways):

Big Day Coming
Mountain of Love (Bill Black cover)
My Little Corner of the World (Anita Bryant cover off I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One)
Magnet (NRBQ cover)
Autumn Sweater
Nuclear war (Sun-Ra cover)
Pass the Hatchet, I Think I'm Goodkind
The Summer
Mr. Tough
Black Flowers
Johnny Thunder (Kinks cover)
Yellow Sarong (The Scene Is Now cover off Fakebook)
Sugarcube
Encore:
It's Alright (The Way You Live) (Velvet Underground cover)
For the Turnstiles (Neil Young cover)
Unknown song with lyric "every cloud has a silver lining" (so I've narrowed it down to a billion possibilities)