Genre, Influences, and everything you need to know

The two bands have many different types of influences. Yo La Tengo was influenced by Velvet Underground, Soft Boys, and Arthur Lee’s Love (Alias Records.) The type of music they play ranges from Garage Rock to New Wave to Experimental. Garage Rock originated in Canada and the United States in the late sixties. New Wave started in the mid to late seventies and started in the United Kingdom and the United States. Both of these types of music have roots in early punk rock. Experimental rock was started by different bands such as The Beatles, Velvet Underground, and Pink Floyd. This type of genre was most often associated with the drug culture of music. The majority of The Beatles songs that are classified as experimental were during the bands period of heavy drug use, LSD being the most used drug. New Times Viking’s sound has the same Experimental Rock and Garage Rock sound as well as a Grunge sound that was made popular manly in Seattle by bands like Nirvana as well as Dallas by bands like The Toadies. The lyrics of many Yo La Tengo songs do not have a real meaning but are more abstract. However, some songs such as Autumn Sweater are very descriptive about small events or relationships. These bands rarely ever write songs with political undertones. Times New Viking writes all of their own material with Adam Elliott and Beth Murphy doing the majority of writing for the vocals. Yo La Tengo started as a cover band and still does many versions of musicians’ songs. They have also started to write many of their own songs since they became more popular in the mid nineties. The average audience of this type of music is middle class youth. Although it is a very welcoming community, outsiders often stay away because they don’t like this type of music.