I went to the Yo La Tengo show @ Shea’s last night.
It was fantastic, in the most literal sense of the word: the band played their 2001 scoring of about 8 surreal, short documentaries by Jean Painleve (put an accent over that second e), moving their music from the serene, creepy, sensual, warped and romantic images Painleve records of alien aquatic fauna.
I wish I could describe exactly what I saw and heard, so I’ll defer analysis of Painleve’s film to this guy. The thing I took from the shorts, which I’ve been told are classics to film students, is that it’s clear Steven Spielberg and Stanley Kubrick watched these films – the aliens from “War of the Worlds” and and the end sequence of “2001″ both look and move too similarly to things like the suction arms of sea urchins and the liquid crystal explosions in Painleve’s shorts to be anything but tributes.
As for the “Sounds of Science”of Yo La Tengo? A work in progress – at the beginning, you could tell this show is a warm-up for the Celebrate Brooklyn! Arts Festival, where the band is playing on Friday Thursday. “Sea Urchins” and “Hyas” seemed slightly…off – the music was soothing and complimented the film well, they just didn’t quite line up – like a film whose soundtrack tape is a second off. After being put into a surreal stupor (in a good way) by the first few clips, the noise kicked in. Glorious, unadulterated noise that went with the electric phosphorescence of “Liquid Crystals.” My only complaint with this section was the noise was near-constant; it didn’t ebb and flow like the images on the screen, especially toward the slow-moving end of the clip.
The two highlights were Painleve’s two most famous works, “Love life of the Octopus” and “Seahorses.” For one, these two had the most traditional song-like structures of Yo La Tengo’s compositions, but they films were also the most touching. Painleve personified the octopi and seahorses to a degree that many in the science community criticized him for, and Yo La Tengo captured the emotions that Painleve projected into his subjects. “Seahorses” was especially poignant, with dreamy panning shots that recalled Dieterle and Reinhardt’s “Midsummer’s Nights Dream.”
Anyway, if you’re in Brooklyn on Thursday, go see the show.
