Yo La Tengo: Fakebook (with download) [BAR/NONE]

Why you'll love it

This Bar/None reissue comes with a download card. Fakebook mixes eleven covers (Daniel Johnston, Ray Davies, Gene Clark, John Cale, Cat Stevens) with five Yo La Tengo songs, and Entertainment Weekly gave it an A minus.

This edition

• Download card included
• Pressed in the USA

About the album

Yo La Tengo have always been the band with the best record collection in Hoboken, and Fakebook is where they opened it up. For their fourth album, Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley turned the volume down, brought back Dave Schramm on guitar and Al Greller on double bass, and made a warm, mostly folk album with producer Gene Holder at Water Music.

The covers are a mixtape of deep cuts: Daniel Johnston's "Speeding Motorcycle," The Kinks' "Oklahoma, U.S.A.," Gene Clark's "Tried So Hard," John Cale's "Andalucia," The Flamin' Groovies' "You Tore Me Down" and Cat Stevens's "Here Comes My Baby." Peter Stampfel adds violin and vocals to "Griselda," while new songs "Can't Forget," "The Summer" and "What Comes Next" sit right alongside them as if they'd always been standards.

Select gave it four stars out of five, and covers have stayed a big part of the Yo La Tengo story ever since. A band that picks other people's songs this well is the musical equivalent of the friend who makes the best mixtapes; we know the type, we employ several.

Also at Kops: more Yo La Tengo on vinyl · browse Alternative

Tracklist

Listen

On Bar/None Records (cat# BRN-LP-020), a reissue of the 1990 album.