The Roundhouse is packed with indie kids of a certain age, come to pay respect to one of the most credible yet mysterious American bands. Veterans Yo La Tengo have mastered more genres than most, but this lack of an obvious style means they’re a hard sell.

However, they’re certainly not a hard listen: they’re tons of fun, finding melodies in the most unexpected places and having a ball doing it. And the lucky crowd witnessed masterclasses from two acts whose lack of a strong image may have cost them crossover success - but who are streets ahead of many of their more successful peers.

Former Gorky’s frontman Euros Childs is YLT’s very special guest. Ridiculously prolific and effortlessly engaging, he proves that sometimes the simple songs are the best. Childs’ quirkiness comes across as totally natural, as he sings either with joy or an unaffected sadness that’s touching. There are no fancy licks or complex metaphors, just simple communication, strum-along melodies and ideas that shouldn’t work but do. Who else could get away with some of the preset keyboard tracks he uses, other than a little kid playing in his room? Euros has full access to his inner child, and he’s all the better for it.

Yo La Tengo means “I’ve got it!” in Spanish - and they certainly have. They play with a joy that belies their 25 year-long career (17 in their current incarnation), and generally overcome the venue’s iffy sound (unless you’re in the Roundhouse’s “charmed” middle section between the two speakers, bands can sound like they’re in a different building). Depending on the song they’re playing, they can sound like jazzers, balladeers, punks, slowcore merchants, shoegazers or noiseniks, but they keep the audience’s attention throughout.

The band opens with a couple of lovely, semi-ambient slowcore numbers: there are echoes of Galaxie 500 in the circling, chiming guitar lines, glacial pace and singer Ira Kaplan’s occasional mumbled, inaudible vocals. YTL are masters of controlled feedback, using it to broaden a song’s dynamics and never ladling out undisciplined noise for noise’s sake. Several times, we are blasted with 20 seconds of aural Armageddon before they segue seamlessly back into the sweetest of melodies.

There are echoes of Joy Division and early New Order in the solemn melodic processions of the earlier songs. Others sound like an abstract Neil Young, country rock at a 90 degree angle.

A string section is introduced as newer material gets played, but unfortunately lots of good ideas and a warmer, more commercial sound (a funky superfly soundtrack and Motown-influenced stomper) are made partially inaudible by the room’s ropy acoustics.

Ira’s wife Georgia Hubley takes centre-stage for a lovely song about Julie Christie, while a groovy garage rock number with bluesy organ has hints of the Nick Cave classic Red Right Hand.

Then they let themselves down with one moment of self-indulgence: a way overlong, messily dissonant noise ‘epic’ that goes nowhere for far too long.

But the band raises its game once more for a typically heterogeneous group of encores:
a surprise cover of Sham 69’s rabble-rousing Second Division punk anthem Borstal Breakout; then a lovely late night, jazzy number; and acoustic sign-off.

To paraphrase Keith Richards on Mick Jagger, Yo La Tengo are “a lovely bunch of bands”.

Ben Wood