Yo La Tengo, I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One

One afternoon six years ago I was passing in and out of a light sleep on the top bunk in my future girlfriend�s room as she and her friends were getting ready to go out. One of them put on her mix tape, the one with �Autumn Sweater�. It was the first time I had ever heard the song. I had no prior associations with the song or with Yo La Tengo. But it made me instantly sad anyway.

A few days later, I met Mary and Greg and the boys for lunch in Highgate. The restaurant was a trendy cafe whose name I can�t remember. We drank white wine, probably. The dry October air gave me a bloody nose which kept me in the bathroom for a quarter of an hour. There was an actress from a popular British soap in the restuarant, though of course I didn�t recognize her.

We drove over to Hampstead Heath and unloaded the station wagon. My cousin Luke was eleven years old at the time and wearing his Rollerblades. He asked his father what a pedophile was. We walked into the park with Millie, the golden retriever. Luke sped ahead of us on wheels. I remember walking next to Mary, humming the bassline from �Autumn Sweater� quietly enough that only I could hear it, and ruminating in heartsick confusion upon how I could, through sedulous pursuit, somehow transform my then-(though-unbeknowst-to-me-at-the-time)-future girlfriend into my imminent-present girlfriend. Down by one of the ponds, Millie charged at a two-year-old girl from behind and knocked her into the mud; it was hilarious. Immediately content in this setting, I was also homesick all the same.

One night before a gig, Wes and I had just completed our pre-show ritual of listening to �Cotton Avenue� by Joni Mitchell and moved on to �Autumn Sweater� and he pointed out that it�s one of the few songs he can think of that ends on a snare hit.

Last fall on tour I brought my YLT mix with me and Dino and I argued over which songs were missing from it. We drove into the heart of Minneapolis listening to �Moby Octopad� as the highway lamps came on and pulled shafts of light across the lumpy topography of the van�s interior.

When I find myself in situations where outmoded yet prevailing social strictures prevent grown men from crying, I generally retreat to I Can Hear The Heart and start with �Damage�, then work my way further into the album. I have to be careful, though. The weight of the years, and all.

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