The members of Yo La Tengo flexed their record collector muscles on their revered collective of covers, Fakebook. The 1990 album featured interpretations of songs by The Flamin' Groovies, Daniel Johnston, NRBQ, and some bands too obscure to even mention on this website. Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley clearly weren't aping past hits during a prolonged battle with writers' block — they were sharing great songs that you likely hadn't heard.
That isn't exactly the case with Yo La Tengo's upcoming sequel to Fakebook. Stuff Like That There, due out August 28, has its share of the willfully obscure, but it also features one of the most notorious earworms of the 1990s: The Cure's "Friday I'm In Love."
A band as respected as Yo La Tengo covering one of the silliest chart-topping songs in recent memory would seem like the end of the world as we know it for fans of the original Fakebook — and that wasn't lost on Kaplan, Hubley and bassist James McNew. The video, directed by Jason Woliner, features Hubley inciting the apocalypse as she strolls around the Silver Lake neighborhood of L.A., singing the song.
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