I don’t want to scare you, but the year 2000 was 20 years ago.

In 1997 the indie-rock auteurs from Hoboken, New Jersey reached what many considered their artistic peak. Their record I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One is a masterful compilation of indie-rock songs that tries to take on many forms of pop music as it can. It would’ve taken a lot of sheer talent to follow-up that succesfully.

Yo La Tengo had became by that point a well-regarded trio in the independent scene. Formed in 1984 by couple Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley, and later completed in 1991 by bassist James McNew after a rotating roster in that position, the band had released eight albums by 2000, including the musical prowess of I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One. Their next release would prove that they hadn’t run out of tricks, and more so, they could actually maintain their relevancy, even if they changed the direction.

Let’s start with saying that And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out is, by Yo La Tengo’s standards, calm and quiet. Most of the album is composed by slow-tempo and subdued ambient sounding pop songs that feature discreet instrumentation and a quiet vocal delivery.

Balladry and slow-tempo tracks are splattered throughout Yo La Tengo’s discography, and they are good at it as they are at many things. The thing with And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out is that the whole aesthtetic of the album actually could help cathegorize it as a dream-pop album, which actually sounds fit, because the songs here are no straightforward ballads, but ethereal songs often beautiful and evocative. First example is opener ‘Everyday’, in which a repetitive bass supports Kaplan and Hubley’ eerie vocals resulting in a truly unbalancing track for opening an album. Yet the song is just an introduction to a record that gets increasingly intricate and interesting.

There’s the perfect organ melody and the steady rhythm in ‘Let’s Save Tony Orlando’s House’, a song based on a Simpsons episode. There’s ‘You Can Have It All’, a distinct rework of a disco song from singer George McCrae, where Kaplan and McNew actually use their voices as percussions supporting Hubley’s melody. And also the echoic guitar passages over a constant, heartbeat-like drumming of ‘Last Days of Disco’, a song where Kaplan describes dancing with his partner, something he doesn’t do often but he realizes he belongs in that moment.

You can find Kaplan’s shoegaze-infused riffs and guitar-ripping in ‘Cherry Chapstick’ and the band goes full ambient in the almost 18-minute opus ‘Night Falls On Hoboken’, but those are really the only ones that somewhat differ from the rest. In general, the music of And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out finds the trio trying new sounds to create a specific atmosphere, in this case a nocturnal record about how delightful can a relationship actually be.

The album’s aforementioned dream-pop tendencies are evident in the lyricism. Yo La Tengo has always favored love and romance in their songs, but it is more evident and central in And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out. Their vivid imagery finds different and expressive ways to describe deep affection. ‘You’ll try and try even if it lasts an hour/With all our might try and make it ours/Cause we’re on our way to fall in love’, Kaplan sings in ‘Our Way To Fall’, with Hubley backing in beautiful high register. The fact that the song assures that they’ll eventually fall in love, and its gonna be worth it, makes its atmosphere considerably more compelling.

The place of And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out within Yo La Tengo’s catalogue is a special one. Is that one album that gets more inviting after a while, even after 20 years. Is that record that you listen after dark, in your headphones, surely embracing Ira Kaplan, Georgia Hubley and James McNew’s melodies. Is the LP that was absent when I saw them live. (The closest they got to this level of coziness was ‘Autumn Sweater’.) But it wouldn’t have fit. It’s probably my second or third favorite album from theirs.

Yo La Tengo is known for going full noise-rock live, contrasting with their naturally sweeter moments, but this album is definitely their most evocative exploration exactly because it rarely changes the focus, it just stays with you, entering seamlessly through your ears and nesting itself fittingly in your heart.