Amoeba Music

It’s tough to go wrong with Yo La Tengo as your backing band, and Christ Stamey’s A Question of Temperature certainly benefits from having the New Jersey trio on board. Stamey first collaborated with the band in 1987 on their sophomore effort, New Wave Hot Dogs, and together with other key collaborators here like Caitlin Cary, keyboard wizard Tyson Rogers, and Stamey's former dB's band mate Gene Holder, this record features a broader, harder-hitting sound than Stamey's previous recorded solo fare. The first half of the record is given over to covers, including Vietnam-era corkers like Cream's "Politician" and the Yardbirds' "Shape of Things." These classic rock warhorses share billing with chiming pop gems more typical of Stamey, including a worthy re-recording of his 1978 single "Summer Sun" and an almost-as-gorgeous one-take-only version of Television's flawless "Venus." But it's Yo La Tengo that provide most of the musical muscle via their particular pastiche of melody and dissonance. The YLT signature sound seeps into almost every song, in fact, nowhere more so than on Stamey's "McCauley Street (Let's Go Downtown)” -- a 10-minute-plus voyage written with his former New Jersey neighbors in mind that unfurls as adventurously as any of Yo La Tengo's own classic feedback-happy marathons. To his credit, Stamey sounds as comfortable yowling in front of the rock band as he does cooing one of the gentler cuts, and A Question of Temperature serves as a nice foil for his more demure and twangy solo pop constructions.