Music Arcades: Yo La Tengo: Prisoners of Love

A depressingly familiar confession: I haven't listened to this as much as it warrants. It being a triple album probably hasn't helped.

I snapped it up as soon as it came out because there was every reason to do so: it helped fill in the Yo La Tengo back story for a relatively recent fan who only knew the albums from the late '90s onwards; the three-CD version was a limited edition; and it was only £8.99. No brainer.

But then it got left on the shelf. Yo La Tengo are always the bridesmaid, never the bride. Or, to put it another way, in 2000 they were the John the Baptist to The Magnetic Fields: if it hadn't been for YLT, I might not have made the decision to go and see an American band that afternoon at WOMAD.

Make no mistake, I love YLT. I love their wit, their ability to be self-effacing and cute one moment, and unsettlingly wild the next. I absolutely love the way they cover Sun Ra's Nuclear War and George McRae's You Can Have it All (both included here) as well as throwing in the odd Thomas Pynchon reference. They're equally at home on Radio 3 (where Mixing It broadcast a gig from Leeds a few years ago) or on 6 Music (where they played cover-versions-on-request on the Gideon Coe show).

It's exactly these qualities that attract some friendly mockery to the band and their fans, but I've never worn black-frame glasses, so that stuff is water off a duck's back to me.