There are, when it comes down to it, two kinds of bands: bands whose sound is described by the invocation of other bands (“______ sounds like a poppier/slower/suckier ______”), and the bands whose sound is used to describe the sound of other bands. The bands in this second category distinguish themselves by gaining purchase on a sound so unique and texturally diverse that they lack a clear antecedent. Yo La Tengo has, over the twenty years of its existence, been deployed as a way to describe countless other bands, but any attempt to describe Yo La Tengo by using the work of other musicians seems futile and narrow. This is not to say that they are devoid of influence—we know that they share our love of Sun Ra, the Velvet Underground, the Flamin’ Groovies, and Mission of Burma. But the work of these forbears has been dismantled and reverse-engineered by such startling and extravagant means that we feel as if we are a private audience to the birth of a new form.

Before this year is through, Yo La Tengo will have released a three-disc set of exemplary songs and rarities entitled Prisoners of Love, a similarly themed DVD compilation; and the scores for two feature-length independent films: Junebug by Phil Morrison and Game 6 by Michael Hoffman, with a screenplay by Don DeLillo. Titles like “The Hardest-Working Band in Rock and Roll” seem designed specifically to make us feel uncomfortable in their earnestness, but Yo La Tengo has been working hard for us. Bashful, enigmatic drummer Georgia Hubley and her husband Ira Kaplan have, over the course of more than a dozen albums, EPs, and singles, been exploring the remote outposts of their particular domestic landscape with calisthenic rigor, buttressed by James McNew’s assured bass work. All they ask from us in return is that we sit comfortably in a durable chair and listen closely to their music until the thing that made us love them in the first place, that twitching, primordial organism let loose inside us when we first heard Painful or the opening strains of “Return to Hot Chicken” from the landscape-shearing I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One, springs once again to life.

—Matthew Derby

I. FLEECE AS A COMFORT ISSUE

THE BELIEVER: You guys were recently at Sundance Film Festival in Utah promoting the two films you just scored. I have never been, but I imagine it to be a massive, airless storm cloud of fleece and corporate-casual tassel loafers.What was it really like?

JAMES McNEW: I saw a lot of fleece. I don’t think it was a statement, though. I think it...