'Yo La Tengo’s' Lifelong Love Story

The story of Yo La Tengo—the actual story, not to be confused with their purposely misspelled 2006 track “The Story of Yo La Tango”—involves sundry minor narratives, shorn of the typically tawdry legends of sex and drugs, woven to form one of indie rock’s most modest institutions. On one level, it’s a love story about Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley’s relationship, which they began as two young, humble artists dancing around each other in overlapping social circles before joining at the hip. But it’s also about that duo’s very gradual artistic development across nearly 40 years, which essentially involved spending the 1980s learning how to be a band—how to play their instruments well, how to record an album efficiently, how to tour—through trial and error, while doggedly searching for a permanent bassist, running through 14 ill-suited candidates before finally landing on James McNew seven years into their career.