Death Match 2010 Drag Race: "Little Honda" Vs. "Turd on the Run"

I dig both these albums. And I was gonna write all this good stuff about them...

Like I was gonna mention how much Exile on Main Street reminded me of my recent match-up of The Basement Tapes and Rattle & Hum but how I just like it better than either of those albums...And how when I first listened to it all the songs kind of blended together into one long world-weary countrified blues rock juke joint kind of thing, but over the years the individual songs have slowly started to define their own personalities...And something about how after any self-respecting rock band has spent years seeing/ doing/ f*cking/ ingesting everything imaginable, there arises a need to return and be baptized in the primordial musical ooze from whence they came...And a mention of how ironic it is that rich white urban British blokes can crank out the music of poor black rural Americans so authentically and without pretense...And a neat anecdotal comment about how Tom Waits allegedly claims "I Just Wanna See His Face" as his favorite Stones' song...

And I was gonna make some clever analogy along the lines of: "If what they say is true, that the blues had a baby and they called it rock and roll, then EOMS stands as the afterbirth that slid out during the whole delivery process"...Nothing cute and adorable here, folks, just a loose, sticky, gritty little entity all its own...With a pair of giant lips and a big ol' tongue stickin' right out at ya, crying for your mama and a bottle of Jack Daniels...

But I'm not gonna write any of that stuff. Instead I'm just going to assign it Uncle Eric's Highly Scientific Overall Album Rating: 4.8

I was also gonna write a fair amount about I Can Hear the Heart...About how the folks in Yo La Tengo seem like genuinely nice folks and I really appreciate that about them...About how this album captures so much that was great about 90s "indie" music...About how the mid-album trio of "Stockholm Syndrome", "Autumn Sweater", and the fuzzed-up "Little Honda" is friggin' brilliant...About how this is probably my favorite YLT album, next to maybe Fakebook...

And I was gonna say that I love a lot of YLT's individual songs, but I often have a problem making it all the way through their albums because they change mood or tone or something too much...Maybe they are almost TOO eclectic for me, at least over the course of individual albums...Like how I love "Sugarcube" but when it goes right into the following track "Damage", I feel like they lost the potential to keep riding that awesome momentum...And I always like their poppier tracks (e.g., the fun little bossa nova influenced "Center of Gravity") far more than their raucous arty avant-garde sound experimentation songs (e.g., the never-ending "Spec Bebop")...And how I really love the album closer "My Little Corner of the World"...

Again, I'm not gonna bother with any of those comments, but instead just give ICHTHBAO Uncle Eric's Evidence-Based Overall Album Rating: 4.2

It was a good race but Mick and Keef and the Turd on the Run take it.