The Underground of Happiness

I used to have a Yo La Tengo fantasy. It involved pulling up in traffic next to a boyracer, one of those with the choons pumping so loud that his souped-up Toyota Starlet is visibly shaking on the street. I roll my window down, nod across at my friend, low-slung in his front seat, and slowly turn up my own car stereo. Playing is ‘Moby Octopad’, the second song on Yo La Tengo’s classic album I can hear the heart beating as one , a pounding, circular bassline which gathers bleeds of guitar feedback and hushed massed vocals to make a curious mixture of insistent but polite. It safely drowns out the boyracer’s disorganised clatter. He looks over at me, agog, no doubt taken aback that something so soft can be so loud. I drive off, satisfied. Yo La Tengo are so much the prototype of the cultish indie band that they were the subject of a hilarious High Fidelity-ish parody by The Onion some years ago (http://store.theonion.com/p-4758-37-record-store-clerks-feared-dead-magnet.aspx). I c...