Yo La Tengo getting ‘Extra ‘Painful’ at The Town Hall this week

Yo La Tengo: Georgia Hubley, Ira Kaplan, James McNew (Photo by Carlie Armstrong)

You can never be sure which Yo La Tengo you’ll see when you go to a show.

The cult-favorite indie rock band is a chameleonic act whose sound can careen from gentle, rhythmic folk rock to noisy guitar freakout to cover-band-style garage rock and back again — sometimes all in the same set.

YLT co-founder Ira Kaplan sat down with me the other day for an interview in advance of the band’s shows at The Town Hall in Manhattan this week — on Wednesday, with Antietam opening, and Thursday with The Feelies.) Tickets to the shows are $32.50 and $42.50, plus fees, and are available by going here to visit Ticketmaster.

We covered a wide range of topics, and Kaplan even dropped a surprising hint about the band’s unique Hannukah shows (eight shows, with multiple guests, over the eight nights of the Festival of Lights) that seemed to come to a screeching halt when Maxwell’s, the revered Hoboken, N.J., rock club that hosted them for more than a decade, closed in 2013.

Read the full interview online now by going here now, or see it in all its print glory by picking up a copy of The Journal News on Tuesday.