Yo La Tengo FAKEBOOK

Yo La Tengo: Ira Kaplan (vocals, acoustic & electric guitars); Georgia Hubley (vocals, guitar, organ, drums); Dave Schramm (electric & steel guitars, organ); Al Greller (acoustic bass).
Additional personnel: Peter Stampfel (vocals, fiddle); The Pussywillows (vocals); Gene Holder (bass).
Recorded at Water Music, Hoboken, New Jersey.
The most consistently accessible of Yo La Tengo's releases, FAKEBOOK is a decidedly user-friendly set of mostly cover songs, but since the songs are well off the beaten track, they will likely be unfamiliar to people without voluminous record collections. While the band is all about extremes--alternating between gentle strumming and folksy harmonies to all-out squalling feedback jams--FAKEBOOK showcases their quiet side. It is a soothing, pretty record, yet with a loose, pleasing raggedness that is one of the band's strong suits.
Guitarist Ira Kaplan was a rock critic before forming Yo La, and he clearly has an encyclopedic knowledge of rock music. The group has its way with such marvelous obscurities as the semi-legendary Flamin' Groovies' "You Tore Me Down," a not-well-known Kinks song ("Oklahoma"), John Cale's tender "Andalucia" (cleverly rhyming "cia" with "see ya") and other even less-well known ditties. Among the many highlights is their lilting take on the early-Cat Stevens chestnut "Here Comes My Baby," repopularized in 1999 on the soundtrack to the movie "Rushmore," and the haunting "Yellow Sarong." They even cover themselves on gentle remakes of "Barnaby Hardly Working" and "Did I Tell You?" and serve up another stirring original, "The Summer."

• Genre: Rock
• Format: Vinyl