I [Heart] Hoboken

The Chris Stamey Experience
A Question of Temperature (Yep Roc)

Few recall Chris Stamey was part of the legendarily influential, critically loved, mostly forgotten dBs. Now he’s better known as a producer, anyway (from Le Tigre to Tift Merritt), so expanding his self to an experience by including buddies Yo La Tengo makes musical, if not mercantile, sense (they don’t move units, either). That temperature in the title is both cool (a shimmeringly effective cover of Television’s “Venus”) and hot (a vamp-tastic cover of “Compared to What”). And on the CD’s centerpiece, both cool and hot – “McCauley Street (Let’s Go Downtown)” frames a fantastic guitar freakout with an achingly beautiful tale of Candy, as sharply drawn as a New Yorker story.