Electr-O-Pura＜Black Vinyl＞

ヨ・ラ・テンゴの7作目『Electr-o-pura』が発売25周年を記念して初の高音質2LPでリイシュー!

USオルタナ・シーンの生きる伝説であり常に第一線を走り続けてきたバンド、ヨ・ラ・テンゴが1995年にリリースした7作目のオリジナル・アルバム『Electr-o-pura』が発売25周年を記念して〈Matador〉よりリイシュー。
58分に及ぶマスター音源の最上級の音質を保つため今回初めて2LP化されており、アートワークはゲートフォールド・スリーヴ仕様での再発となる。
『Electr-o-pura』は前作の6作目にあたる『Painful』で築き上げられた大胆なソング・ライティングを美しい音作りとともにさらに発展させ、相対するサウンドのテクスチャーや曲調、その漂う雰囲気にさらに深みを持たせた作品となっている。
ポップサウンドが色濃くキャッチーな「Tom Coutenay」や哀愁漂うバラード曲「Pablo And Andrea」 、歪んだギターサウンドや何層にも重なったサウンドがシューゲイザーを思わせるラスト・ソング「Blue Line Swinger」など魅力的な楽曲が満載であり、36年にわたって活動を続けてきたヨ・ラ・テンゴの作品の中でも最も卓越した名盤と言える。

After the noisy but dream-like drift of Painful, Electr-O-Pura found Yo La Tengo in livelier and more outwardly enthusiastic form; while they had hardly abandoned their more subdued and contemplative side, as evidenced by the lovely "The Hour Grows Late" and "Pablo and Andrea," they seemed eager to once again explore the grittier textures they'd unearthed on President Yo La Tengo and May I Sing With Me with tunes like the gleefully manic "False Ending" and the bizarre horn-blasted "Attack on Love." Yo La Tengo also served up one of the most perfectly realized pop tunes in their repertoire with "Tom Courtenay" (which not only name checks the Beatles, but boasts a tune the Fab Four would have been happy to come up with themselves), and revisited the concept of the noisy groove jam (which they pioneered on "The Evil That Men Do (Pablo's Version)") with the acetone-powered "False Alarm" and the joyous "Blue Line Swinger." Throughout, Ira Kaplan's simple but forceful guitar lines, Georgia Hubley's steady, subtly inventive drumming, and James McNew's solid, supportive bass add up to a group that prizes intelligence and imagination over flash, and makes it work over and over. Few bands have consistently better ideas than Yo La Tengo, and they make 14 of them work like a charm on Electr-O-Pura. (By the way, those incongruous comments about the songs were lifted from an obscure book on the Blues Project, and don't trust those timings on the back cover -- they're deliberately inaccurate.) ~ Mark Deming