Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).
Tom Courtenay (1995)
Yo La Tengo has always prided themselves on being unpredictable. They've been playing indie rock since 1984 and can move seamlessly from quiet dream pop to raucous noise rock to acoustic folk. The band's name comes from an obscure baseball anecdote from 1962. They've happily built a cult following over the course of 40 years and 17 studio albums.
Singer-guitarist Ira Kaplan and drummer Georgia Hubley are the married couple who started the New Jersey-based band; after some different bassists, James McNew joined in 1993.
By the time 1995's Electr-O-Pura came out, YLT was already indie rock royalty. Their first album was produced by Mission of Burma bassist Clint Conley, they collaborated with Daniel Johnston on a song and they were critics' darlings. Electr-O-Pura was their seventh album and the first single was an intentionally confusing song named after a British actor, Tom Courtenay.
The lyrics are obscure, but the song itself is so catchy you find yourself singing even though you have no clue what's it's about.
"Julie Christie, the rumors are true/As the pages turn, my eyes are glued/To the movie star and his sordid life/Mr. X and his suffering wife/I spent so much time dreaming about Eleanor Bron/In my room with the curtains drawn/See her in the arms of Paul/Saying "I can say no more"/As the music swells somehow stronger from adversity/Our hero finds his inner peace/So now I'm looking for a lucky charm/With a needle hanging out of its arm."
Courtenay doesn't get name-checked in the song, but actresses July Christie and Eleanor Bron (the inspiration for the Beatles' "Eleanor Rigby") are. The song balances poppy catchiness with feedback-laden guitar squalls. It's just so goddamn cool. It's got everything I love about music.
"As time goes by, I know it's gonna happen/I know it's going away/Gonna take its toll, gonna take its toll/Gonna take my time/And I'm thinking about the way things are/And I'm thinking about the way things were/Thinking about Eleanor Bron/And I'm thinking about a lucky charm/And I'm thinking about the needle/Oh, I'm thinking about the needle/And I'm thinking about..."
The song's video is brilliant: The band gets an offer to open for the reunited Beatles and has to deal with the hype and disappointment of landing such a coveted and difficult gig. Hilarity ensues.
I didn't hear the song until a few years after it came out, when it was included on the What's Up Matador compilation, which includes songs from Matador Records releases from 1991-1997. It's a terrific comp, featuring bands like Teenage Fanclub, Helium, Pavement, Superchunk, Cat Power, Bettie Serveert, Spoon, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and Guided By Voices. A veritable who's who of '90s indie coolness. And the coolest song on it is "Tom Courtenay."
YLT appeared in the 1996 movie I Shot Andy Warhol as an anonymous version of the Velvet Underground, who the band were often compared to in their early years. They've also played a Salvation Army band in the movie The Book of Life and a Night Ranger cover band on the TV show Parks and Recreation. I've seen them a few times in concert, and have also seen their side project Condo Fucks. The most recent YLT album was last year's This Stupid World and it was one of my favorite releases of 2023. After all these years, Yo La Tengo still brings the heat in fun and unusual ways.
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