Barnaby, Hardly Working

Kaplan and Hubley wrote it. Spectrum Culture says it is built around a looped feedback sample and a repeated two-note bass riff, and Indy Week's Annie Zaleski calls it the first great Yo La Tengo song, noting the Velvet Underground influence and a jagged loop of scratchy noise. Paste ranks it tenth among their 20 best songs, the best original the band recorded in the 1980s, and PopMatters puts it fourteenth of 15, saying it feels anything but dated and that the Fakebook version turns it into a folk-pop gem. Christgau praised its opening guitar hook. Length is 4:35 on the album and 4:36 on the 2005 compilation Prisoners of Love; the acoustic remake on Fakebook is 4:12.

Setlist.fm counts 149 plays. We found no statement from the band on its meaning, and do not know whether our upload is the 1989 or Fakebook version.