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Concert reviews Music

Yo La Tengo at the movies

YO LA TENGO at Toronto Underground Cinema as part of the Images Festival, Saturday, April 21. Rating: NNNN


Thanks to the Images Festival, Torontonians finally had a chance to see the Sounds Of Science, in which Yo La Tengo plays a live soundtrack to the short films of French director Jean Painlevé.

The films themselves are primarily explorations of sea life, with titles like Sea Urchins, The Sea Horse and Love Life Of The Octopus. The films themselves are subtitled with text that ranges from the scientific to the whimsical, creating surreal, almost anthropomorphic tales of the life cycles of mollusks, fish and other creatures.

Originally scored by Painlevé, Pierre Henry and others, now the New Jersey trio blends noise, melody, jazz and, in the case of the film about shrimp, some pretty heavy funk to illustrate the films.

Their instrumental compositions are well-considered and genuinely add to the films. They allude to the octopus’s heaviness crystallizing water is an effervescent feedback frenzy seahorses bob along to a sweet, buoyant, hypnotizing track. While it wasn’t the same experience as seeing a Yo La Tengo concert, the palette they drew from was as rich and varied as we’ve come to expect.

@nowtorontomusic

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