I don't normally review albums, as I feel that everyone has their own styles and tastes.

That being said, this is possibly one of my favorite albums of all time. It's not like any other Yo La Tengo album, and I guess a lot of folks may not like that.

It's somewhat calm and mellow, and seems to almost follow itself. It seems the album needs to be listened to as a whole, not in parts.

Then again, it's just my opinion.

Prior to listening to this CD I never heard of Yo La Tengo. I read some reviews and was curious about the buzz people had towards this group. At first listen they reminded of alot of other groups I enjoy. I guess we consider this ripping groups off, but YLT manages to pull it off as a successful tip of the hat. I am still a newbee to this band but they have me hooked to listen to a few more CDs in the future.

One of the things I absolutely adore about Yo La Tengo is that they've never stood still, each album is an evolution, an experiment, a step in a different direction. Of course, what's likely to happen is that on some steps along the way, there's going to be something that I don't care for, but I'd prefer this than constant reinvention of their earlier records. And sometimes, the change produces heights that I couldn't've dreamed Yo La Tengo would reach to.

For me though, "And Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out" falls more in the former category-- it's an album of sublime difference from all their other records, but for me, it's more a miss than a hit. The album is rife is organs, programmed beats and a very modern vibe. It's certainly intriguing and lots of folks like it, it's just not for me-- too many of the pieces feel overlong ("Everyday"), forced (the droll "Last Days of Disco") or just not terribly interesting (the much loved by everyone else "Saturday", so I suppose you should take my criticism with a grain of salt.

There's a couple standouts here and there-- the band's too good not to pull something off, the bouncy "You Can Have It All" is a sublime pop song with a great groove and the pastoral "Our Way to Fall" is really something, quite unexpected even from a band as diverse as Yo La Tengo. Still, "And Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out" just isn't an album I could get into.

3 1/2

Tengo has brought a pretty consistent, if compositionally mellow buffet of songs for many of their later works, always eluding greatness by just enough to garner an array of eclectic boy/girl alterna-pop minor innovations instead, and this of course is no exception, but maybe moreso the rule.

I happened upon this album while browsing at Tower Records. I had never heard of Yo La Tengo before and this album served as a great introduction. I now own quite a few of their album but this one remains one of my favorite album of all time.

I usually dislike bands that go for sound rather than song, as Yo La Tengo have increasingly done over the course of their career, but I can make an exception when the results are this good. At first this album sounds too much like Stereolab, but it improves toward the end. "Cherry Chapstick" is one of my all-time favorites: "Someone else's date / In someone else's door / There's a girl with cherry chapstick on and nothing more."