Sunny-Day Music/Those Memories: Yo La Tengo Edition

I'm starting a new feature called "Those Memories" (named after the Brian Jonestown Massacre song of the same name which you can listen to here), and the first edition is this very post, mashed up with my Yo La Tengo edition of "Sunny-Day Music." "Those Memories" will basically be posts in which I reminisce about specific songs, artists and albums. Pretty straightforward.

My favourite sunny-day Yo La Tengo songs were all made for pool-side/beach lounging. Yo La Tengo has always been an incredibly versatile band (from noisy, droney alt-rock on 1993's Painful to near-pure pop on 2006's I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass to scuzzy garage-rock with their alter ego band Condo Fucks on 2009's Fuckbook), but one thing I've always felt Yo La Tengo has been able to pull off particularly well is capture a very drifting, aquatic feeling, and I'm not merely referring to their instrumental soundtrack to the 2001 underwater documentary the Sounds of the Sounds of Science. Hear for yourself:



"Little Eyes" is my favourite summer song of all time. Every year, I can't wait for summer to start so I can listen to "Little Eyes" the way, to me, it is meant to be listened to. It's the most perfect chill, soak-in-the-sun-with-your-eyes-closed kind of song. My favourite memory of listening to "Little Eyes" was at Cribbons Beach back home in Nova Scotia last summer. I was laying on a flat rock that was pretty much just big enough for me to lay on while the merciless sun beat down on me. The rock was shaped like a spoon insofar as it narrowly stemmed a couple of meters from the coast towards the ocean so that looking around me, I felt as if I was afloat in the middle of the ocean.



"Return To Hot Chicken" gives me almost the exact same feeling as "Little Eyes," except I feel even more afloat when I listen to "Hot Chicken" due to its pure ambience. I usually listen to "Return To Hot Chicken" as a segue into "Little Eyes."

In addition to "Little Eyes" and "Return To Hot Chicken," Yo La Tengo has less ambient but still kind of watery/aquatic songs that are more acoustic and more lyric-oriented to lounge to too: