Yo La Tengo's firm mantra: Never be afraid of change

NEW YORK — Sixteen years ago, Yo La Tengo guitarist Ira Kaplan was conducting an interview to help hype his band's new album. He had called the reporter from a pay phone in New York and was having a remarkably pleasant chat when he had to cut the conversation short.

"I think I'm about to be beaten up by this guy who wants to use the phone," Kaplan said. "I'll call you right back."

Just eight albums later, a few things have changed for the Hoboken, N.J., band. Kaplan's now dodging traffic in London while talking on a cellphone, preparing for the global launch of the band's 12th proper LP, the indignantly titled "I Am Not Afraid Of You and I Will Beat Your Ass." If this interview were to meet an untimely end, it wouldn't stem from a lack of courage. Those Hoboken chicken days are so over.

Kaplan and drummer Georgia Hubley (also Kaplan's wife) have been at it for 22 years now, evolving from a band that covered songs to a band that covered entire genres — pop, garage rock, psychedelia, noise, jazz.

But when the group dialed down the tempo and upped the temperance over the course of two consecutive rock albums (2000's "And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out" and 2003's "Summer Sun"), it felt like the end of an era, and the hand-wringing didn't exactly subside last year when the band released the desert-island triple-disc retrospective "Prisoners of Love," the sort of project usually reserved for posthumous consumption.

"It had elements of composing your own tombstone," Kaplan acknowledges.

But don't call it a coda. With "I Am Not Afraid Of You," Kaplan, Hubley and bassist James McNew have not only rendered "Prisoners" obsolete with some of the best tunes of their career ("Black Flowers," "I Feel Like Going Home"); they've recorded another career-spanning kaleidoscope, this time with new songs.

The ebullient noise of their earliest records shares space with the serenity of more recent outings, a decision driven home (almost) immediately when the incendiary 10-minute opener "Pass the Hatchet, I Think I'm Goodkind" gives way to the dorky horns of "Beanbag Chair."

"I think we liked the idea of signaling in the first 30 seconds that this record was going to have more ... let's say rock, or some equivalent word, than the last couple of records did," Kaplan says.

And what about that defiant title?

"There's a reason we tend not to be more forthcoming about the meanings of things because I think it's healthy and interesting when people conjecture about it," Kaplan says — a long-standing tradition.

The band has never included lyric sheets with its album art and often drowns words in the mix so it's near impossible to make out the lyrics.

Yo La Tengo is into hints, though. On the band's home page at Matador Records' Web site you'll find a picture of actor Peter Finch from the film "Network" (you know, the "mad as hell" part). Obviously, Yo La Tengo go about things in a slightly more subtle fashion, but the political and cultural critiques are unmistakable, right down to the "pretty boys in skinny ties" dig on "Black Flowers."

Mess with them at your own risk.