(Photo by Michael Levine) Yo La Tengo are one of the more gifted and prolific rock bands of the last 20 years. Besides their own considerable output, including last fall’s widely well-received full-length, “I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass” (Matador), the Hoboken, N.J. trio have also begun to write music for film. In that capacity they contributed music to Michael Hoffman’s “Game 6,” Phil Morrison’s “Junebug,” Kelly Reichardt’s “Old Joy,” and John Cameron Mitchell’s “Shortbus.” Recently, the Ithaca Times caught up with guitarist Ira Kaplan before a Yo La Tengo show in Chapel Hill, N.C., to discuss the band’s new-found compositional outlet.
“Old Joy” will screen at Willard Straight Hall Feb. 9, 10 and 13.
Popcorn Youth: Does negation play a role in how you think about note selection and how you approach the guitar?
Ira Kaplan: I think so, yeah. And not just in terms of guitar solos. I do think space has a lot to do with it — either leaving it or not leaving it in. Sometimes a lot of the notes are allowed to be pretty accidental.
Popcorn Youth: Why do you think certain niches within the experimental music world have gained more prominence in the public consciousness much more in recent years?
Ira Kaplan: Tell me what you mean. I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to answer, but I’m curious as to what you mean by that.
Popcorn Youth: Things such as freak folk, noise bands, krautrock, or artier approaches seem to play a bigger role in mainstream music these days.
Ira Kaplan: I don’t know. (Pauses) It’s hard to say. In some ways, I would turn the questions around and say why not? At least in terms with what we do, I’ve never thought we were a particularly “weird” band and never should be that hard to enjoy. And I think a lot of the things you describe just aren’t particularly … (pauses) A lot of times, people just hear something, and they’ll like it. I have no answer for how those cycles work and why they work that way.
Popcorn Youth: How important is place or location to a band like Yo La Tengo? How would you characterize your relationship with NYC or Hoboken as playing a role in Yo La Tengo’s development over the years?
Ira Kaplan: I don’t think it’s an “either/or.” I kind of trust that it has a role, and I think in a lot of the situations, you could ask a lot of questions where I would say, “It matters,” but we’re not that curious how. I’m sure that in some way I don’t care to define, if we were a “NYC” band, we’d be a different band than if we were somewhere else.
In a certain practical way, a lot of our friends have rehearsal rooms that they rent by the hour. They have shares where they get a night or two a week for as long as they want. Over the last 15 years, once we started playing during the day, when we could get by without having other jobs, at first we had a room that we used during the day and then we would let other people have it at night. And that was relatively unlimited access for quite a few years. And we’ve had rooms completely to ourselves, which is literally unlimited access. And that certainly has an impact, that kind of [access], even just to approach rehearsals, when you have a bad or unproductive rehearsal, or even just one where you spend most of the time talking about things that on the surface have nothing to do with your music. It’s the fact that we’ll come back tomorrow and it’ll be different, rather than “this is our one shot this week” or something. It just changes the mood and it changes the atmosphere where you can make things up. And I think our geographical location certainly contributed to that. I don’t think anything is unimportant.
Popcorn Youth: What are your thoughts on the presence of the Internet, in the context of where you guys are coming from and where you are now. What are your thoughts on the implications of that kind of increased accessibility with music in general?
Ira Kaplan: Well, I think that there are two things, one positive and one negative. Obviously, the accessibility is a great thing. I know that in the case of WFMU, our local amazing free form station, now that it’s on the web we notice that when we do our fundraising for them, or when we just listen to their fundraising, pledges come in from all over the world. They are listened to all over the world, and obviously that’s a good thing. I think at the same time, sometimes there’s a risk that the passion can be harder to … isn’t as strong when it’s that easy. When you’ve invested so much time and effort into finding something, that may be reflected in what it means to you. But when everything is just a click of the mouse away, it does maybe risk losing some of that emotional commitment to it.
Popcorn Youth: How has better computer technology or more sophisticated recording environments changed the way you guys approach recording or making music?
Ira Kaplan: Well it’s changed in that we use it. We’ve never wanted to establish rules about the “only way to do anything,” so we record using analog tape but at the same time we use digital stuff when it seems appropriate. It’s not like you have to move with the times, or you can’t move with the times. Like “Only mono!” (Laughs) We just try to do whatever seems to work; either use it or not use it, but creatively in both cases.
Popcorn Youth: Is recording more affordable now?
Ira Kaplan: It’s hard to say. I don’t know if that’s particularly true. Specifically for us, it might be because Roger [their producer], who we’ve worked with for many years, actually has his own studio now, so we went to his studio. But our new album was recorded onto two inch tape and mixed onto half inch tape. Whatever Pro Tools and stuff we used was in addition to the way we recorded before.
In that sense, we’ve done a lot of other things, too. Some of our soundtrack things actually have been done strictly digitally under Pro Tools. It’s made that much easier. I don’t know; it’s the way we’ve done our soundtrack stuff for these low budget movies that have not much money to pay us. It’s made that possible, because we’re able to work in our rehearsal space, and I don’t know how we could, especially with our method of working, which is so trial and error — it’s not like we have a score charted out, and then go into the studio and record it. I don’t know how else we could have done the soundtracks without the digital technology. I didn’t even think of that when you first asked the question, but it’s definitely the case.
Popcorn Youth: And Cornell Cinema is doing multiple screenings of “Shortbus” and “Old Joy.”
Ira Kaplan: Yeah, “Old Joy” and “Shortbus” and “Junebug” and “James 6.” And right now we’re doing some work for Georgia’s [Hubley, Yo La Tengo’s drummer] sister Emily. And you’re probably familiar with “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” — Emily Hubley did the animation for that. She’s now working on a combination of a live action and animation feature, and we’re doing some music for her as well.
Popcorn Youth: What’s your approach to collaborating with filmmakers and directors who have a specific concept?
Ira Kaplan: Not in the case of Emily’s movie, because Emily is approaching it differently. But with most, it’s literally “directed” by the director. In the case of the four feature films we’ve worked on, and I think this is more the case of the typical working method, we see a rough cut and then meet with the director and they start talking about where they want music. And to varying degrees of specificity, they say what they want and where from music. And then we work from there and submit things and get input and go back to work. In Emily’s case, she’s been giving us more ideas, because she wants some of the sketches of music in place as she films. She wants the music to be an organic part of the making of the movie, where it’s generally one of the last things to be done.
Popcorn Youth: What’s appealing to you about working alongside filmmakers?
Ira Kaplan: There’s a couple things. For one, as just fans of films — we’re big film fans and have a lot of love for various soundtracks over the years — and it’s just fun to be on the other side, to be making them instead of appreciating them. And also the group is so “the three of us”; we all work so closely and so often to the exclusion of anyone else. It’s not like we have a record company that is intrusive in the creative process — so many other bands have that aspect. We very rarely work to please anyone but ourselves, so when you start involving other people, not only involving them, but also answering to them, it just changes the whole process of creativity, and it means the results will be different. And it’s an interesting way to work. Different things come out, and it might be something you draw on the next time.
I mean, in a concrete sense, on our current record on Matador there’s more use of strings and horns than on any of our previous records, and I don’t think that’s coincidental to the fact that we did a fair amount of that in the music to “Junebug,” some of which ended up in the movie and some of which didn’t. But I think we gained an element of comfort with using that kind of instrumentation, and it became something we could draw on for our other songs.
Popcorn Youth: Many of your contemporaries, musicians like Roger Miller and Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore and Mike Watt, besides their main rock band, they also have other side projects. What’s your own approach to projects outside of Yo La Tengo?
Ira Kaplan: Well, not too much. Not like the people you’ve named. On New Year’s Eve, I played piano with another band, but it’s not like those groups. James [McNew, their bassist] is the closest. James makes records under the name Dump and that’s really the most viable side project of the group, and even that’s pretty occasional at this point.
Popcorn Youth: What are your thoughts on the current state of what is now called “indie rock”? As far as I can gather, “indie rock” was not a label that existed twenty years ago.
Ira Kaplan: I have nothing … I have no answer for that. I’m not particularly a fan of the term. I just … I recognize that like it or not, that is what we are considered. (Laughs) To me, we’re just a rock band, and I don’t really …. There’s some element of where I feign in comprehension, but some of it is genuine. I just don’t see why … what does that mean? I don’t really know what it means.
Popcorn Youth: At what point were you aware that this was a word that people were using to describe really disparate bands?
Ira Kaplan: (Pauses) I don’t know. It’s not a particularly fruitful conversation. (Laughs) Or topic for me.
Popcorn Youth: Where do you see Yo La Tengo fitting in the landscape of pop or rock music today, in 2007?
Ira Kaplan: As I said, I don’t really see it … we just do what we do, I don’t see how it’s that much different from anyone else. I don’t pay much attention to the landscape of pop music today, so maybe that’s why. If I did, I’d see why we’re not more entrenched in it. (Laughs) But I’m not as up to date as I was as a younger person.
Popcorn Youth: Has being a writer and a music critic and being a musician informed each other, exploring both sides of that fence?
Ira Kaplan: I don’t think it has as much as some writers seem to think it has. For one thing, I wasn’t a particularly analytical writer. I was somebody who just … like the cliché about music writers, I wanted to be in a band, and I wasn’t, so I was doing something else to just kinda stay around, at least be in the periphery if I couldn’t be doing it. But I feel like I approached it as a fan.
It’s almost like the answer I gave to soundtracks. Well, I was a fan of soundtracks, so I wanted to make them. I think a lot of the same mentality went into being a writer and being in a band. I think the time I’m most conscious of my tenure as a writer is more when I’m doing interviews than when I’m actually making music. (Laughs)
Popcorn Youth: Do you have any favorite music journalists that you like to read now?
Ira Kaplan: (Pauses, laughs) There’s not too much. The people I like are people from further ago — Byron Coley, I love reading anything by him.
Popcorn Youth: Are there any new young bands that you like? Musicians that carry on the spirit of creativity or exploration, in any genre?
Ira Kaplan: I love the Black Lips. I’m really not paying attention, so I always hesitate. I mean, I do love that band, but it’s almost a fluke that I heard them. It’s not like, “Well, after due consideration of all the bands out there, I’ve anointed this band as my favorite.” Somehow I stumbled into them at Maxwells [the Hoboken music club] and thought, “Wow, they’re great.” There’s always stuff that I enjoy listening to, but I don’t listen with the commitment that I had before.
Popcorn Youth: So what does Yo La Tengo have planned for this year?
Ira Kaplan: Still doing a lot of touring for this record. This tour ends on Saturday and then less than a week later we’re going to Japan and Australia and Singapore. And then we have another tour in April and then we’ll kind of see. Different things will pop up.
Popcorn Youth: So, the reason why I’m conducting this interview is for a story on the Cornell Cinema program “The Music of Yo La Tengo.” They’re screening “Old Joy” and “Shortbus.”
Ira Kaplan: (Laughs) Well. I’m happy. We don’t have that much music in “Shortbus,” and there’s a lot of stuff that isn’t us, but we were doing them simultaneously, “Shortbus” and “Old Joy,” and they’re extremely different and the two working processes couldn’t have been much more different. And I love the idea that they’re being shown together.
Popcorn Youth: Well, I really hope that Yo La Tengo passes through upstate New York at some point.
Ira Kaplan: Yeah, there doesn’t seem to be that plan just yet. I kinda keep hoping that at the end of the school year, one of the colleges or something will bring us up. That’s happened before, maybe it will happen again.
Visit Yo La Tengo’s homepage here.
They also have an informative page on their label’s website, Matador Records.