What is most striking about Yo La Tengo is how they’ve never been lost to an era. The brash, lo-fi, amateurism of New Wave Hotdogs and Ride the Tiger gave way to the controlled-noise soundscapes of Painful, the epic noise-pop and keyboards of I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One, the somber unplugged ballads of And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out and finally the soft-spoken, Brian Wilson-on-a-rainy-day, Summer Sun. Each album, though distinctly Yo La Tengo, is sonically and temporally different. The reason for Yo La Tengo’s longevity and continuing musical relevance lies in their constant sonic permutations.

The October release of the six-song EP, Today Is the Day, proved that the slight critical ridicule of Summer Sun was nothing to be taken seriously after releasing three consecutive records deemed “album-of-the-year.”

Today Is the Day starts with the title track, and to the listener’s alarm sounds nothing like the drowsy, soft-keyed version found on Summer Sun. “Today Is the Day” swaps the muted drums, maracas and distant twangy guitar for a more mature Yo La Tengo sound of old. Back is the noise pop of “Sugarcube” and “Little Honda” with Ira Kaplan’s simple, four chord structure and Georgia Hubley’s steady spine of drumming. As it was the most defined song on Summer Sun, Yo La Tengo does not render a trashy version; instead, they add some fresh air to its previous complexity.

The simple grumble of trademark Yo La Tengo distortion and manipulated, squealing feedback free the song from its prior deliberate arrangements. Hubley’s pregnant voice is natural to the perplexed position of self doubt and longing that circulates around the lyrics. If nothing else, the song jogs along to a fun, poppy beat.

The next track, “Style of the Times,” moves in much the same way as “Today Is the Day.” It starts with Yo La Tengo’s keystone of “feedback as instrumentation” and chugs rhythmically through two chords as it ambulates farcically around a slacker’s apathy, stating in the chorus, “If it’s up to me, I’ll just leave it up to you.” Kaplan’s vocal is never as evocative or as strong as the timorous Hubley but it blends, when he’s at his best, harmonically into the drive of his guitar.

The dark and brooding “Outsmertner” screeches along, playing feedback in more shapes than sounds, with Kaplan and Hubley sporting a duet like walking down the dark, dank alleys by the Hudson on Halloween. “Dr. Crash” jangles about like a slow, surfy instrumental that was probably a throwaway from the Summer Sun sessions. The EP closes with a slow, stripped down, acoustic version of “Cherry Chapstick” off of And Then Nothing…

But the highlight after the first two charging tracks is the cover of Scottish folkster Bert Jansch’s “Needle of Death,” an acoustic, fingerpicked elegy about heroin addiction. Hubley’s plaintive whisper supercedes the lyric evoking more of a feeling than a message. Yo La Tengo still proves to be the master of the cover—even if it is covering themselves.

In the end, and within the age that we live in, there proves to be no reason to spring one’s good money on an EP, even if it might be six songs. I don’t suggest this to the casual fan, but if Yo La Tengo is one of your favorite bands it’s well worth the purchase, since the excitement for their next release seems to render Summer Sun more of a sidestep than an actual direction for a band whose average material still sprints past the pack of what we all think of as indie rock.