I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One (1997)

I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One is the eighth studio album by the American indie rock band Yo La Tengo, released on April 22, 1997, by Matador Records. It was produced by Roger Moutenot and recorded at House of David in Nashville, Tennessee. The album expands the guitar-based pop of its predecessor Electr-O-Pura to encompass a variety of other music genres, including bossa nova, krautrock, and electronic music. Most of the songs on the album deal with melancholy emotions and range from short and fragile ballads to long and open-ended dissonance.

Upon release, I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One reached number 19 on the Billboard's Heatseekers Albums chart, becoming the first Yo La Tengo album to enter the charts. Three songs from the album, "Autumn Sweater", "Sugarcube", and the cover "Little Honda", were released as singles. The album received widespread acclaim from music critics, who praised the band's ability to successfully expand the boundaries of nearly any pop style. The album is widely regarded as the band's best work and is frequently included on several publications' best album lists. In 2020, Rolling Stone included it on its list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time as no. 423.

Background and recording

I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One is the follow-up to Yo La Tengo's highly acclaimed 1995 album Electr-O-Pura, which was ranked at number 9 in The Village Voice's 1995 Pazz & Jop critics' poll. Electr-O-Pura marked a new creative direction for the band. According to singer and guitarist Ira Kaplan, "I think after Electr-O-Pura we've had a direction of trying not to worry too hard about what the next album is going to sound like [...] we just write a bunch of songs, and then go one baby step at the time and just do what seems right." At the time, Kaplan also explained that the lyrics used to come last: "What will really happen is somebody will start playing and we'll all fall in and play for a long time. We'll finish playing an hour later and kinda say, 'Oh, do you remember what you did?' Then we'll write something down—or maybe we won't."

I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One was recorded at House of David in Nashville, Tennessee and produced by Roger Moutenot, who also produced the band's previous two albums. Kaplan described the recording sessions of the album as follows: "We hole up in a room and work for a really long time. Then we come out and blink our eyes because it's sunny out". Initially, the band did not intend to write a long album, but eventually felt that having a long album was the only way to accommodate the instrumental track "Spec Bebop", which the band felt needed to be included in the album "by hook or by crook". I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One is the only Yo La Tengo album that was recorded on an ADAT magnetic tape format, even though it was mixed to analog later. Moutenot refutes this, however, claiming the album was recorded with a 24-track Studer. Audio mixing took place at Big House and Magic Shop in New York City.

Music and lyrics

I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One expands Electr-O-Pura's guitar-based pop to encompass a variety of other music genres, ranging from the bossa nova soundscapes of "Center of Gravity" to the electronic grooves of "Autumn Sweater", the krautrock jams of "Spec Bebop", the "jazzy goof" of "Moby Octopad", the trip hop sound of "Damage", and the psychedelic folk instrumentation of "We're an American Band", among others. Steven Arroyo of Pitchfork similized: "The album is as quiet and gentle as a winter snowfall, as loud and electric as a spring thunderstorm, as free and fun as a summer bike ride, and as durable and dependable as, yes, the world’s best autumn sweater."

The album also contains two cover songs: "Little Honda", a Beach Boys tune written by Brian Wilson and Mike Love, and "My Little Corner of the World", recorded by Anita Bryant, although the band initially did not know she had ever recorded it. The former, which is a song that Kaplan learned for a solo guitar show, was originally used to make sure the recording equipment was set up right. However, it was ultimately included in the album because, according to bassist James McNew, "it just sort of turned out pretty good."

The title to the song "Moby Octopad" is a reference to Yo La Tengo's appearance on the 1995 Lollapalooza tour, where the band performed mid-afternoon sets on the festival's side stage. Often performing earlier in the afternoon was the artist Moby. One of the instruments that Moby used in his performance was the Roland Octapad, an electronic percussion instrument. When taking the stage for their own performance, Yo La Tengo frequently noticed road crew's tape with "MOBY OCTAPAD" written on it, still left on the stage after Moby's set. The band later used this anecdote as the title for an instrumental that they were jamming on. Lyrics unrelated to the Moby story were added later.