YO LA TENGO Popular Songs (2009 UK 12-track CD album - 'Popular Songs' demonstrates that everything said about Yo La Tengo in the past is still true, only more so. Now, almost any song can sound like Yo La Tengo, provided it's Yo La Tengo playing it: The strings-and-keyboards orchestrations of the opener, 'Here To Fall', on which Ira offers the new best articulation of what it means to love; the Clean-feeling pop of 'Avalon or Someone Very Similar', unburdened by gravity or friction; Georgia's aching 'By Two', a dream-machine in motion, a warm shiver for your cold, still nights. And that's just the first three tunes! What of the garagey rave-up of 'Nothing To Hide', the funky but unfunklike 'Periodically Double Or Triple', and the classic-pop duet, 'If It's True'? Which isn't to even mention the gently ambling 'I'm On My Way', containing some of the album's smartest, simplest lyrics, which rolls into a duo of romantic wedding-ready tunes alternately fronted by Georgia ['When It's Dark'] and Ira ['All Your Secrets']. Then fans of Yo La Tengo's well-established habit of stretching out will be enthralled by the simmering, sultry 'More Stars Than There Are In Heaven' and the hypnotic ebbing flow of 'The Fireside', these two epics totalling 20+ minutes of the most beautiful, obsessive Yo La Tengo music ever put to tape!).