Painful | 
 enlarge | Artist: Yo La Tengo
Label: Matador Records
Category: Music
List Price: $11.98
Buy New: $7.66
You Save: $4.32 (36%)
New (29) Used (18) from $6.49
Rating:  27 reviews
Sales Rank: 22294
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 5.6 x 5 x 0.5
MPN: 10069
UPC: 744861006923
EAN: 0744861006923
ASIN: B00000581R
Release Date: September 23, 1997
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: BRAND NEW, Factory Sealed items direct from the Studios. 30 Day Satisfaction Guarantee. Quick International Airmail!
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| Tracks:
| • | Big Day Coming - Yo La Tengo, Kaplan, Ira | | • | From a Motel 6 - Yo La Tengo, Hubley, Georgia | | • | Double Dare - Yo La Tengo, Kaplan, Ira | | • | Superstar-Watcher - Yo La Tengo, Hubley, Georgia | | • | Nowhere Near - Yo La Tengo, Hubley, Georgia | | • | Sudden Organ - Yo La Tengo, Kaplan, Ira | | • | A Worrying Thing - Yo La Tengo, Kaplan, Ira | | • | I Was the Fool Beside You for Too Long - Yo La Tengo, Hubley, Georgia | | • | The Whole of the Law - Yo La Tengo, Perrett | | • | Big Day Coming - Yo La Tengo, Kaplan, Ira | | • | I Heard You Looking - Yo La Tengo, Hubley, Georgia |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com essential recording
The long-running Hoboken, New Jersey, trio's favorite devices are neatly evidenced on this 1993 disc: barbed guitar freakouts by Ira Kaplan, breathily exquisite Georgia Hubley vocals ("Nowhere Near"), an obscure but excellent cover choice (the Only Ones' "The Whole Of The Law"), and a love for sonic texture that's backed up by first-rate songwriting. Subtle at its loudest and vital at its most subdued, Painful is built around a series of hovering, dreamy bass and organ drones matched by the singers' purr, but propelled by Hubley's insistent rhythms and Kaplan's prickly guitar leads. --Douglas Wolk
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| Customer Reviews:
 Quietly powerful. October 6, 2008
Michael Stack (North Chelmsford, MA USA)
Yo La Tengo's early records show a band that's looking for something-- they bounce between riff based rock adn folk songs, feedback and jangly guitars, seeking a balance. While it would end up being a lower-key affair than anyone would perhaps have expected, "Painful" is the first album where they seem to have struck that balance.
Opening with a gentle, circular organ motif, repetitive guitars, throbbing bass and a whispered vocal on the first version of "Big Day Coming", the piece is almost Eno meets Yo La Tengo, especialy when Ira Kaplan's feedback-drenched lead hits, managing to be both noisy and subdued at the same time. This ends up being the formula for the record-- striking that balance between noise and a swirling ambient stew, whether it's driven by a distorted bassline and a buzzsaw of a lead guitar (single "From a Motel 6") or a rising, circular organ and a subdued, gentle vocal ("Nowhere Near"). One thing it manages is to be is consistently fantastic, whether completely subdued ("A Worrying Thing") or more aggressive (riff-based second version of "Big Day Coming"). Start to finish, "Painful" proves to be a completely satisfying record. It's missing something that makes me think of it as a masterpiece, but it's incredibly good. Highly recommended.
Yo La Tengo's Second Best May 31, 2007
mightymouse (California)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Painful is actually a quietly brooding melodrama. Despite it's dreamy sound, Yo La Tengo's music is anything but apathetic or detached: it is drenched in reverb that sounds like pathos, distortion that sounds like anger, vocal harmonies that sound like love. In essence, Yo La Tengo found the perfect formula to paint love songs and heartbrake songs behind impressionistic soundscapes that only the skillful instrumentation of the band members could convey. Painful is probably the first complete Yo La Tengo album in this vein, and surely the first great Yo La Tengo album. The eclecticism is present - but not jarring - the compositions piece together like a ride on gently, swelling waves.
I must admit, almost everything you see in "Painful" can be found to an ever greater measure on "I Can Hear the Heart Beating As one". This later album, made in 1997, is Yo La Tengo's masterpiece. And while it doesn't radically shift the aesthetic established on "Painful", it is entirely essential - while Painful is by no means made obsolete.
To complete the YLT experience, also buy "I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One" and "And Then Nothing turned Itself Inside Out"
Rating: 9.3/10
 Yo la tengo best September 12, 2006
Nuno Leal Da Silva (Lisboa, Portugal)
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
I'm not into Yo la Tengo music so much that i'd own all their records. No, that I think they're bad or something. No, i really think their work is very good, and as people i think they are one of the coolest people around in music biz. But they use and recreate some formulas that doesn't touch my innerself and i need that in music. This record does it. That's why i have is this one that i think it their crown jewel. Their Velvet-SonicYouth influences are here but they went ahead of them - they created their own home coziness, typical Yo la Tengo coolness that they make in all their albums but unfornatelly only on a couple of songs, here is the whole album.
Almost their best August 13, 2006
MDM (NC)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This album is a close second as best album in the band's ouevre (with "I can hear..." as #1). For anyone wanting to check out this band or not knowing where to go after "I can hear..." this is the album.
this is it October 10, 2005
Boxodreams (district of columbia)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
"The Whole of the Law" is an old Only Ones number, and that was the band that did "Another Girl, Another Planet," a song that some people from back in those nothing-but-fun punk/power pop days hold to their hearts as tightly their dear old moms. Yo La Tengo knows Only Ones leader/wreck Peter Perrett was a heroin guy and they make the song into a beautiful nod, with this droning keyb figure that sounds like one droopy eyelid somehow raising when somebody opens the door or rustles something in the room. The sound, however, must meet the song and there is some kind of hushed sanctity nearing desperation going on here ("Baby, baby I'm in love with you/I had to contact you")and, believe it or not, there is another vibe to it, a Peter Yarrow "Puff the Magic Dragon" thing going on with this song that I can't get enough of. "Painful" has so much insight into late-night insanity, which is great, but I always stop - cold -what I'm doing when "The Whole of the Law" comes on and just listen, like I've heard some majestic bird deep in the woods that is making a sound I've never heard anything like in my life.
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