Monday's Long Song

It is Monday apparently and if it is Monday there must be a long song. This is Tortoise's remix of Yo La Tengo's Autumn Sweater from 1997. 

Autumn Sweater (Remixed By Bundy K. Brown, John Herdon, Douglas McCombs And David Pajo)

In its original Yo La Tengo form Autumn Sweater is a beautiful, organic song with woody drums, organ/ synth and a hushed vocal about the changing of the seasons, a couple slipping away, moments frozen in time, love and longing. Tortoise don't remix the song so much as completely reinterpret it, a languorous seven minute instrumental that defies description. Electronics with live drums, from jazz but not jazz, indie but not indie, not really post- rock but definitely not rock. Not rockist at all. Lovely, understated, a mood as much a piece of music. 

Tortoise released an album at the end of October, Touch, their first since 2016. It's a 2025 joy that I overlooked slightly and have only really grown to appreciate it recently. It's intricate and layered, instruments working out their roles in the space around them- lots of little shifts and changes but all feeling like a unified whole. Cinematic. An album that gives a little more away each time. Find it at Bandcamp. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Autumn Songs

Some songs with the word Autumn in the title for a Sunday mix in late September, a day ahead of the autumn equinox- tomorrow, Monday 22nd September at 7.22 pm, a day which marks the end of astronomical summer and the onset of astronomical autumn. Buckle up. Winter's coming. 

Autumn definitely seems to bring out the melancholy and downbeat in songwriters- the songs on my hard drive in the mix below are firmly in that camp- it's OK to wallow in that sometimes and I think by the time we get to the end there's some catharsis.

Forty Five Minutes Of Autumn

• The Small Faces: The Autumn Stone
• Lee Hazlewood: My Autumn's Done Come
• Jaymay: Autumn Fallin'
• Pacific: Autumn Island
• Yo La Tengo: Autumn Sweater
• Higamos Hogamos: Harold/ Autumn Equinox Sunset
• The Prisners Dream: Autumn Days
• East Village: Black Autumn
• Marcel Slettern: Autumn
• Brian Eno: Dunwich Beach, Autumn 1960
• Coldcut : Autumn Leaves (The Irresistible Force Remix)

The Small Faces song The Autumn Stone is from their later period when they'd shed their initial skin and become a little more hippy, a little more reflective, they sound a bit... earthier and woodier. Written by Steve Marriot and recorded in September 1968, The Autumn Stone is a ballad with a beautiful slow glow. The Small Faces were such a great band weren't they.

Lee Hazlewood's autumn isn't just seasonal, it's a lifetime thing sung by a man who seemed to be permanently found in the autumn of his life. This song was the flip side to Sand, a 1966 7" single. 

Jaymay is an American singer/ songwriter, an indie/ folk artist, whose song You Better Run was a music blog song back in the early 2010s golden days of music blogging. Her 2007 album of the same name, Autumn Fallin' is a lovely pun for those on the US side of the Atlantic. 

Pacific were on minor Creation records band in 1990. Their song Jetstream was a favourite with me and a friend who went into a flat share in 1992, a song that sampled the sinking of the Belgrano. Autumn Island was on their 1990 album Inference which is probably Creation's least heard album, undeservedly so but in 1990 Creation had many other irons in the fire and some bands just fell through the cracks. 

Yo La Tengo's Autumn Sweater is one of my favourite songs by anyone, ever. Everything about it- the words, the singing, the drumming, the tone, the feel, the longing to be gone, to be moving on... it's all just perfect. 'We could slip away/ Wouldn't that be better/Me with nothing to say/ And you in your autumn sweater'. 

Higamos Hogamos are/ were Hackney based Steve Webster and various assistants and collaborators. I first heard them when Andrew Weatherall played some krauty/ cosmische tracks by them on a radio show in the dim and distant past- I think I followed up by going to the Higamos Hogamos MySpace page (which dates it). The track on this mix comes in two parts, the first half a lovely experimental instrumental and the second a field recording of the autumn equinox at sunset. 

The Prisners Dream (sic) were one of those American garage rock bands who made the grand total of one sole 7" single, released on Rene Records in 1967. They came from Canonsberg, Pennsylvania. Autumn Days is a gorgeously melancholic folk rock song, backed with You're The One I Really Love. Autumn Days was on a double album compilation from a couple of years ago called Ghost Riders, seventeen songs for a North American road trip with sleeve notes by Sonic Boom. I reviewed it at Ban Ban Ton Ton in 2022 and it's a record I still recommend highly. The Prisners were all between 17 and 19 years old when they recorded the song and sound utterly bereft, a state of being before they've even reached adulthood. 

East Village were on Heavenly, caught out in that short period between late 80s indie and early 90s indie- dance. Their album Drop Out has been re- issued several times, on each occasion to rave reviews. They made little in the way of waves at the time but every time Drop Out comes out again they attract a few new followers. 

Marcel Slettern is from Athens, Georgia,an electronic producer, writer and visual artist who goes for the single word title here- autumn, a few minutes of piano playing. I have no idea why or how this song ended up on my hard drive or where it came from but I'm glad it did. 

Brian Eno's Dunwich Beach, Autumn, 1960 is from his 1982 album On Land, a landmark ambient album. Dunwich was a Suffolk port that feel into the sea due to coastal erosion. It's one of those Eno ambient tracks which is absolutely beyond compare. 

Coldcut's cover of the jazz standard Autumn Leaves has been released in various versions and at various times. None of the versions quite matches The Irresistible Force's remix, a Balearic masterpiece and one which provides an ending that takes us to a better place. 

Fallout

Yo La Tengo released a new song last November ahead of an album and a tour this year. Fallout sees Ira, Georgia and James slip right back into the mid- 90s sound of Painful and I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One, a slow burning fuzzy thrum over which Ira sings softly, asking for help and looking for escape. The chords change exactly where you want them to, the drums kick along and the fuzzed up bassline pushes onwards.

Fallout sounds like it could morph into a song from their back catalogue at any moment, 1997's Sugarcube most obviously to these ears. Classic Yo La Tengo and authentic New York indie rock. 

Sugarcube

They've been in business since 1984 and are about to release their sixteenth album. The previous one was an album of instrumental ambient guitar music recorded around one microphone while following social distancing protocols in 2020. Yo La Tengo have reached a point where they can do what they like and if harking back to their mid 90s sound is where they are, more power to them. The new album, This Stupid World, is out on Matador in February.

Half An Hour Of Yo La Tengo

New Jersey three-piece Yo La Tengo make a very particular kind of US indie rock- their sound comes from the New York traditions of 60s folk, CBGBs punk, angular post punk and The Velvet Underground married to the wall of shoegaze feedback. The husband/ wife duo of guitarist Ira Kaplan and drummer Georgia Hubley and bassist James McNew all contribute vocals. Starting out in the mid 80s, in the 90s and 2000s they made several superb albums, filled with the kind of songs that hit a certain spot, an emotive, just out of reach, dewy eyed fuzzed up guitar rock, melodies smothered in noise. 

1993's Painful album, 1995's Electr- O- Pura and 1997's I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One are their high watermarks. In 2000 they released And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside- Out, the record that saw the music press catch up with them, at the exact point they slowed down, turned the amps down and created a much softer sound. Since then they've released a further seven albums, meandering between the differing points of US underground indie. 

I saw them play at The Roadhouse in Manchester, a basement venue on the edge of the Northern Quarter that closed its doors to bands for the last time in 2015. Today it's a restaurant. The internet tells me the gig was 9th November 1997 and who am I to disagree. I'm pretty sure this is correct, '97 (pre- kids for me, touring to promote I Can Hear The Heart...) but don't remember it being November, it seemed like the end of summer in my memory but maybe that's just the YLT sound. They played a dozen songs, the wondrous Autumn Sweater included (a song I never get tired of) and encored with an unrehearsed version of Borstal Breakout and spine tingling covers of However Much I've Lied (Gram Parsons and Emmy Lou Harris) and Speeding Motorcycle (Daniel Johnson) before a ear splitting, amp bursting Big Day Coming. One of those gigs in a small, sweaty, dimly lit basement that lives long in the memory. 

Half An Hour Of Yo La Tengo

• Autumn Sweater
• From A Motel 6
• Big Day Coming
• Sugarcube
• Tom Courtenay
• Here To Fall
• Stockholm Syndrome
• Little Honda

Autumn Sweater, Sugarcube, Stockholm Syndrome and their cover of The Beach Boys Little Honda are all from '97's I Can hear The Heart Beating As One, a sixteen song double vinyl album that is one of the 90s unsung guitar peaks. Autumn Sweater, with it's dry, woody drum intro and heartstring tugging descending organ chords, and Ira's thin, enervated vocal, is beautiful as I said before. 'When I heard the knock at the door/ I couldn't catch my breath/ Is it too late to call this off?' he sings, 'We could slip away/ Wouldn't that be better/ Me with nothing to say/ And you in your autumn sweater'. A film scene in a few lines. 

From A Motel 6 and Big Day Coming are from Painful (which isn't far behind I Can hear the Heart Beating As One, a superb self contained album that seems to summarise a world). There are two versions of Big Day Coming on Painful, a quieter, hushed one led by a droney organ that opens the record and then a noisy, amps and pedals turned up one- the one in this mix is the latter one. Tom Courtenay, which starts with the line 'Julie Christie/ The rumours are true' sung over a wall of fuzz, is from Elect- O- Pura. Here To Fall is from 2009's Popular Songs, an album that had noise and atmosphere plus strings. 

Yo La Tengo is Spanish for 'I have it!', from a story connected to a baseball team in 1962 and confusion between team members who spoke English but no Spanish or vice versa.

Watch Her Spiral Away

Today we take our daughter Eliza to university in Liverpool, the same university I went to in 1988 and we're taking her to the halls of residence on the same site as the ones I stayed in for my first year. There are lots of emotions going on obviously. Leaving home is such a massive rite of passage and as a parent it's one of those cycle of life moments, something that you want it so much when you're eighteen- I could not wait to leave home- which suddenly feels very different when you're the adult and it's your child leaving. I remember sitting in a pub the night before I went to Liverpool and a woman at the bar, probably in her 30s looked at me and said I looked far too young to be going to live in Liverpool. So off we go, taking her to live in another city and although she'll be back and we're really proud of her, we're obviously going to miss her and her company as well. 

Back in 2014 she was 11 and starting secondary school. I took her to the bus stop and this song played in my head when I walked back home as the us went off around the corner. Yo La Tengo in 1993 and some blistering indie rock...

Big Day Coming

Here are some L postcode local heroes, four moptop/ bequiffed boys from Liverpool in 1984, singing of crystal days, joy, pain and misfit ways.

Crystal Days

Finally, this one is by Andy Bell, the Ride/ Glok one not the Erasure one, and a song from his gorgeous 2020 album The View From Halfway Down. I read an interview with Andy earlier this year and he talked about how the song Skywalker was about his daughter as she reached eighteen and went off into the world and at the moment I read it I realised which lines were going to hit when this day came to pass...

'Let the girl go and watch her spiral away/ You're not the centre of her world now anyway/ There's nothing left to say/ Her future flows out from from today/ On the restless crest of a wave/ Just starting to be...'

No I'm not, I've just got something in my eye. 

I Heard You Looking

It's the last day of the school year today, the end of the toughest year in teaching I can remember, tough for multiple reasons, many Covid related. The last day of school when you're a kid is a day of celebration and release, the six weeks holiday stretching before you with all the promise of summer. It feels a bit like that this year, especially as the sun is shining and we've been promised/ threatened with a heatwave, but this summer it also just feels like a relief and an end- or at least a pause (I'll leave the opening up of Covid restrictions on Monday and government decision making and all that for the moment). 

This is a seven minute guitar led instrumental by Yo La Tengo from their Painful album in 1993, a masterpiece of US indie- rock/ shoegaze. I Heard You Looking is one of those bittersweet instrumentals, sweeping and evocative, a sound and playing that manages to say loads without needing a single word- late evenings, sun down, light fading, cars in the distance, credits roll, that sort of thing. 

I Heard You Looking

Autumn Sweater

Indian summer yesterday, autumn sweater today. In 1997 Yo La Tengo released I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One, a double album of perfectly formed New York indie rock. Within the four sides of vinyl lies possibly their best song, certainly one of their most affecting.

Autumn Sweater seems to tell the story of a couple who've reached the end of the road and the regret that that entails. Songs about relationship break ups and endings are ten- a penny but Ira Kaplan manages to find a new way to express something about this opening verse

'When I heard the knock at the door
I couldn't catch my breath
Is it too late to call this off?

We could slip away
Wouldn't that be better
Me with nothing to say
And you in your autumn sweater'

Songs about relationship break ups and endings a ten a penny but Ira Kaplan manages to find something new to say in the opening verse. There's insecurity in there, not knowing what to do, wanting to turn the clock back and a feeling that escape would be for the best- and the thing that sticks in his mind most is a piece of clothing. The sense of loss comes through again in the middle eight section...

'I'll try hard, I'll try always
but it's a waste of time
it's a waste of time if I can't smile easily
like in the beginning
in the beginning'

Musically there's just bongos, drums and organ- from the opening drumbeat and shakers to the descending chords and fuzz part, nothing is overcooked. A mini masterpiece. What's more you can hear the leaves turning brown. 

Autumn Sweater

Sugar

I'm launching into what may be an ill conceived Friday series here at Bagging Area. Last Friday I posted several songs about honey- songs by Death In Vegas, The Jesus And Mary Chain, The Pastels and Spacemen 3. Today's musical foodstuff is sugar, delicious, addictive, lipsmacking sweet stuff (that a report recently said is the real cause of the modern obesity crisis in the western world). A quick search of my hard drive reveals I'm spoilt for choice when it comes to sugar.

The lightest song on The Stone Roses debut album from May 1989 was about a girl, a sugar spun sister, opening with John Squire's crystalline guitar chords and Ian's softly sung vocals. The chorus turns things a little in what seems on the surface to be a fairly simple love song- the sky going green, the grass blue, M.P.s involved in solvent abuse- all these things would happen before she is happy with him. There's a bit after the second chorus where there's a pause and in the gap Ian sings 'my hands..... are stuck to my jeans' which is very nicely done (and which for years I misheard as 'stuck to my dreams'). The sugar analogy is back at the end as Squire winds things up- she is the candy floss girl, he the sticky fingered boy.

(Song For My) Sugar Spun Sister

In 1997 Yo La Tengo put out a career highpoint, the double album I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One, an album which is a masterpiece of its kind. Sugarcube was in the middle of side 1 and later released as a single, 3 minutes 21 seconds of New York dreamy, soft noise perfection.

Sugarcube

Lyrically it's a bit more oblique than The Stone Roses sugar spun song but I think it's about the same thing ultimately...

'Whatever you want from me
Is what I want to do for you
Sweeter than a drop of blood
On a sugarcube
And though I like to act the part of being tough
I crumble like a sugarcube
For you'

More sugar vicar? 

AR Kane's sugar song came out in 1989 and is a lilting, off-kilter song, acoustic guitars and odd tunings and another case of sugar being a female who's a little too sweet.

Sugarwings

There's loads more sugar on my hard drive- The Orielles have a song from last year (with an Andrew Weatherall remix to boot) called Sugar Tastes Like Salt, Slowdive's recent triumph gave us Sugar For The Pill, there's some Balearic Sugar Water from Kamasutra, Echo And The Bunnymen's glorious 1987 single Lips Like Sugar and Secret Knowledge's Sugar Daddy, a 1994 epic from Kris Needs and Wonder. I think I've posted all of these before at some point. There's plenty more sugar in my record collection too but I'll wrap this up with one more sugary delight before our teeth fall out. Four years ago Timothy J Fairplay released a 12" in his Junior Fairplay rave guise, a back to the old skool circa 1990-1 retro-rave track that I love to pieces. Created using solely a breakbeat and a Korg 1, a vocal whoop and a stacatto 'yeah!', and then released on one sided purple vinyl, it is fun bottled, the future backwards. Sugar Puss. 



Now go and clean your teeth. 

You Shouldn't Hide But You Always Do

From northern England yesterday to New Jersey today. I've posted some Yo La Tengo recently but make no apologies for putting some more up. In 1993 they released Painful, an album combining their love of ambience and atmospherics with melodic guitar and noise. The noise on From A Motel 6 is there at the start and comes in ecstatic bursts afterwards. Motel 6 is a nationwide chain of budget motels. I always imagined someone similar, Teenage Fanclub say, writing a British equivalent about Travelodges or Premier Inns in reply.

From A Motel 6

Now I'm Looking For A Lucky Charm

If you're looking for sublime, romantic indie-rock with happy sad melodies, just the right amount of fuzz, some chiming noise and the sense that something else is out there, just out of reach, there's no finer sound than Yo La Tengo in the mid 90s. Tom Courteney is a marvellous example- maybe their finest (although I'm willing to listen to arguments for Autumn Sweater, From A Motel 6, Sugarcube and Big Day Coming. Actually this list could go on and on...)

Tom Courteney

Big Day Coming

Big day today- child number two, our daughter ET, starts at secondary school, getting the bus on the main road, full uniform and bags, and all the kit and caboodle that comes with it. As a secondary school teacher I've seen thousands of children do this but it all seems a bit different when it's one of your own. On the bright side, she's confident, she's looking forward to it and she seems ready. Onwards and upwards.

Yo La Tengo have some great songs in their back catalogue, including this one, a slow, fuzzy song that packs a punch.

Big Day Coming

Yo La Remix

I found this recently and was going to wait for autumn but frankly that involves planning- Yo la Tengo put out a career spanning double disc about a decade ago. Limited quantities came with a third disc, the main highlight of which was this- Autumn Sweater remixed by MBV's Kevin Shields. Autumn Sweater is a beautiful, slow burning song of lost love, shyness, leaves turning brown and the need for an extra layer of clothing. Kevin Shields sidesteps that for a drum loop, a repeated organ part, an isolated and distorted vocal, an overloaded bass riff. Then he begins to add some other loops, all running on and on for just shy of nine minutes. Stunning.

Autumn Sweater (Kevin Shields Remix)

Yo La Tengo 'Autumn Sweater'

Something to ease the soul and lift the spirits after a Wednesday night which ended in some disappointment round these parts (and many thanks to all those who texted messages of support after we were dumped out of the Champions League last night). I saw Yo La Tengo play the Roadhouse in Manchester after I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One came out, about ten years ago I reckon. They were fantastic, playing guitar drones, rock-outs, moments of lo-fi spine-tingling beauty, and some random covers (Gram Parsons, Sham 69). This is their finest moment to these ears, although there are many other contenders- And Then Nothing Turned itself Inside Out is a great album, last year's Popular Songs held up well, and from their early stuff from you've got to go a long way to find better songs than Big Day Coming and From A Motel 6.

This song, Autumn Sweater (and somewhere I've got a Kevin Shields remix I need to dig out), is autumn captured on tape, all disappointment, loneliness, longing and regret- 'We could slip away, maybe that'd be better, me with nothing to say and you in your autumn sweater'. Lovely drums and organ, descending bassline, whispered vocals. Maybe not quite what we want on a sunny spring morning but it'll fit for the moment.

02 Autumn Sweater.wma