With Yo, the old ones are still the best

detonation Yo La Tengo Bush Hall, Shepherd's Bush

SIX years ago fresh York trio Yo La Tengo - Spanish for "I've got it" - fix themselves in uncharted territory. After 15 years and umpteen albums of dislocated on the contrary melodic art-rock, their ninth attempt, And Then Nothing turn rounded Itself Inside Out, became a creative and commercial hit.

It's not the kind of thing that's meant to happen to subterraneous guitar veterans in their forties. Since then, granting Yo La Tengo have struggl to maintain that horizontal of conviction and instinctive brilliance.

As of the like kind last night they sounded like a band with, well, 20 years and their best albums behind them. with equal reason while tracks from their of recent origin album, I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass, had their point of times it was older material that unbrokened fresher and vital.

Any imbalances and deficiencies, however, were not immediately apparent.

After the obligatory feedback-churning opener fresh album highlight Beanbag Chair had a winning display of chirpy immediacy and fun; a wonky Paul McCartney steal that's light upon its toes.

Same goe for Mr Tough, a gorgeous, helium-voiced Curtis Mayfield pastiche played for melodys as much as laughs.

Indeed, for all their Noo Yawk imperiousness and artful cutting side this is a band with a rather large ludicrous bone. "Have you noticed?" began singer, guitarist and keyboardist Ira Kaplan, "how bass players acquire to a certain stage where they have to have six bass strings upon their fretboard? Why play six strings when you can play four? Actually, ours goe single better - he plays sole three!"

Yo La Tengo's spherical and bespectacled bassist, James McNew drily retorted: "That's nothing - you sole play seven piano keys!"

Certainly, this is a band that doesn't make progress big on over-fussy arrangements.

They have a knack of making simple, climbing chords unbroken effortlessly rich and expansive. At times, although a bit more concerted effort upon their new material wouldn't have gone amiss. It's not downright duff just slight and inconsequential, the mark of floating interlude that adds atmosphere to an album on the contrary precious little else.

The band fired up spirited garage rocker I Should Have Known Better and Watch without For Me, to try to raise the gumption horizontals but oddly, the tracks were as weary as their 10-minute forays into ill-advised male honey-bee rock.

"We're just getting the hang of the novel album," said Kaplan, sheepishly.

"Come November you'll gaze back and think 'was that just a nightmare'?"

Well, not quite. A band of this calibre is still more scintillating than the callow post-Libertines disciples clogging up Camden. The inclusion of oldies Stockholm Syndrome and Autumn Sweater, for instance, were show-stopping reminders of Yo La Tengo's grainy, claustrophobic intensity.

For the encore, playful overspreads of two pre-Love Arthur to leeward obscurities enabled a mildly fazed band to breathe on the outside But a gloriously doleful and hazy reading of Saturday, from that fet album six years ago, raised the question of whether they can reach similar unassailable heights again.

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