Search - Dump :: Plea for Tenderness

As Dump, Yo La Tengo bassist James McNew finds an outlet for his more quirky music leanings. A Plea for Tenderness is McNew's latest offering, an appropriately titled full-length disc filled with subtle pop melodies and cute simplicity. Among the album's 16 tracks, McNew performs noteworthy covers of Jacques Dutronc's "Et Moi, et Moi, et Moi" and Love Affair's "Everlasting Love" without completely dissecting the originals for novelty's sake. But what's really surprising is the range of McNew's originals. Though the album starts off with "The Big Bands," a sample-filled, dance-beat homage to that lost era of music, the rest of the disc sounds like a strange hybrid between the pop despair of the Karl Hendricks Trio and the instrumental experimentation of Brian Wilson. McNew's everyman voice becomes endearing after a few listens, and, for the most part, these home recordings sound far too sophisticated to be considered lo-fi. --Jason Verlinde