When I lived in Hoboken, NJ, Yo La Tengo rehearsed a block away from my apartment. On hot, humid New Jersey nights, I would walk past their rehearsal space, and lean close, sweating and grinning, soaking in the delicious drone that wafted out from underneath the semi-soundproof door.

Though I'm now on the other side of the country from Hoboken, I've got all the things I love about Yo La Tengo on their latest album, I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One.  With this release, Yo La unifies the sounds gracing so many of their last albums. The folky-goofiness of  Fakebook  turns bossa-nova on I Can Hear. The feedback-driven guitar jams from Electr-o-Pura morph with sweet, optimistic pop songs. The cohesiveness of the songs on Painful! hits new levels.

Yo La Tengo's career spans 11 years, and indie rock fans are no stranger to the variety of music created by drummer Georgia Hubley, guitarist Ira Kaplan and bassist James McNew. I talked to Georgia Hubley about the band, the new album, and being a female drummer.

MWS: Do you get grouped in with female musicians or drummers?

GH: I guess the most common thing that happens, is people will compare me to Mo Tucker [former drummer of the Velvet Underground], which happens all the time. I can see that even it wasn't only for the reason that she's female. But I don't think that's the only reason that it's happening. I think people make those generalizations just because they're right there. That's really the only one, but that's the thing I get all the time. It's not really like they're ever mentioning any other female drummers. Or sometimes they'll say I remind them of other drummers that aren't female.

MWS: How do you see yourself fitting in?

GH:I think of myself as part of this group. I think the group has a fairly strong sense of male and female, in different ways, not so specifically to each person. And I think the music reflects that-- and that's a good thing. I think that comes across. But it's nothing that's so specific. When you see all female bands, that's a strong statement, and more of a specific statement. And I think our statement is slighter vaguer than that. There's strong feminine personality, whether it's coming from me or coming from the group. It's two varied aspects of both, which is how I think we want to present ourselves, and how I want to present myself in this group: to have a voice that's universal in the group, not myself just being a woman.

MWS: It seems a lot of female musicians get lumped into the "chicks that rock" category. I've never thought of you in that context, though.

GH:Oh, well-- I get that too. (Laughs.)

MWS: How did this album come together?

GH: There are certain things that come to us really naturally. For as comfortable as that is, you come to a point where you want to push it a little bit further and do something you've never done before. I think with every record, we've tried to do that a little bit, and the more deft we get, the more likely we are to achieve something we haven't done before.

I think that's happening with the playing, and the way that we play. I know personally some of the drumming things on this record, a few years ago would've been things I would've never thought I could do, and similarly with singing - singing in a way that isn't the usual three note range that I usually gravitate toward.

You just take a few more risks and grow a little bit. I hope we're growing! (Laughs.)

MWS: Within the band, how does the creative process work?

GH: We tend to write songs, increasingly, where the three of us get together and play and see what happens, and things come out. There's not a lot of dialogue about it. In the formative stages, there's the three of us creating something, each one of us putting something into the pot. And I think we've been around each other long enough, that we tend to respond to what we're each doing musically.

It's much more about music than people tend to realize. It's hard to discuss, because it's not a verbal form. People respond to music, obviously, but sometimes it's hard to write about it in terms of understanding that. But that's so much what it's about.

At a certain point, there are discussions about it-- why don't we do this with this song, and so on. We'll play something for an extended period, and afterwards, we'll all nod to each other and say, "Oh, that was pretty interesting", and sometimes we'll never even come back to it. And that's really fun-- that's one of the most rewarding parts of it.

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