Lost in the Grooves is a bi-weekly column where we revisit overlooked, underappreciated, and downright strange entries in artists’ back catalogues.

Yo La Tengo is a paradox. At once the band’s sound can be gentle and sensitive, then manic and destructive, but the New Jersey trio’s sound never stays in one place for long. Yet, there is not a moment in their 40 years’ worth of music that they aren’t unabashedly themselves. There’s no mistaking the signature of Ira Kaplan’s wailing electric guitar, Georgia Hubley’s propulsive drumming, and James McNew’s driving bass lines.

Starting in 1993, the group had a legendary four-album run. It began with the slow-burning “Painful,” then the ecstatic “Electr-o-pura,” next, their definitive record “I Can Heart the Heart Beating As One,” and ending with “And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out” in 2000, which is the band’s most sophisticated effort yet. Each album further refined what made the previous release special. The feedback-driven “Double-Dare” got more unwieldy on “Blue Line Swinger,” and the deep melancholy of “Damage” aches further on “The Crying of Lot G.”

So what happens when one of the figureheads leading the renaissance of indie rock makes a complete 180? You get something like 2003’s “Summer Sun.” It was largely considered a disappointment and one of Yo La Tengo’s worst records by critics and fans.

Is it really as much of a letdown as everyone makes it out to be?

First, for some context, Yo La Tengo was formed in 1984 by the now-married Kaplan and Hubley– two music obsessives who met at Maxwell’s, a Hoboken bar and venue that hosted iconic acts throughout the 80s and 90s like Nirvana and The Smashing Pumpkins.

It wasn’t until almost a decade later that McNew joined the band as a touring bassist and then as a full-time member. He first played on their 1992 album “May I Sing With Me,” but the band as we know it today first appeared on their next release.

“I think this group really started when we made the record ‘Painful,’” said Kaplan. “‘Painful’ was the first record that we made as the three of us, and I think it sounds different from the things that came before it. Even though I can see connections with the earlier records and things we’ve done since, it really seems like mostly we’ve built on that record.”

They navigate genres like rock, ambient, punk, shoegaze and noise like rock-and-roll polymaths. Both the low-key bossa nova of “Center of Gravity” and the wall of distortion of “Deeper into Movies” gracefully coexist on the same record, held together by an authenticity and intimacy that are the soul of Yo La Tengo.

The heightening of this push-and-pull made Yo La Tengo so exciting to follow and ultimately “Summer Sun” so divisive—the focus shifted from evolution to exploration.

Breezy and low-key, “Summer Sun” is a laid-back listen that, while channeling carefree days on the beach just enough in its lyrics, is not as bright and sunlit as its title may suggest. In fact, the cover features all three band members bundled up in winter coats outside a strip mall, the sky a cloudy gray.

“We really need to get together with the Matador art department about that. We submitted eight rolls of film containing one shot after another of us in bathing suits,” said Kaplan. “At the end of the session, the photographer requested one shot of us in our winter coats, ‘for his personal collection,’ we were assured. Imagine our dismay when the album came out.”

The album also notably features free jazz musicians Roy Campbell Jr., Sabir Mateen, Daniel Carter and William Parker providing trumpet, flute, alto and tenor saxophone and double bass throughout.

The record begins with “Beach Party Tonight,” a spellbinding collection of reversed guitar tones, organ drones and fractured harmonies reminiscent of the intro to Sigur Rós’s “Ágætis byrjun.” It’s a transporting gesture that sets the pace for what’s to come both musically and lyrically, with a single discernible phrase among the collection of voices.

“I want to go back / To the time that I was seven / If I could just go home / I could go around in circles / I know that I’d be frightened / To go home.”

“Beach Party Tonight” fades as nonchalantly as it came and ushers in the next track, “Little Eyes,” the most straightforwardly energetic tune on the album.

The song is driven by its uncompromising rhythm section, with Kaplan providing a catchy lead guitar line and Hubley’s hushed voice singing about dissociation and connection.

“Season of the Shark” and “Today is the Day” are the most beachy tracks on the record, with the former sounding like an homage to the Glasgow indie rock band Belle and Sebastian, and the latter featuring a dreamy lap-steel guitar.

Another version of “Today is the Day” would appear a few months later on a separate E.P., this time interpreted as a kinetic rock song rather than the drifting, low-tempo feel of the original.

The only track on the album with McNew on lead vocal, “Tiny Birds,” is a love song, albeit one fraught with anxious caveats and lamentations. Lyrically split in half, the first section of the song has its narrator nervously rattling off invitations to spend time with someone while trying to remain as unconcerned as possible. In the second half, the narrator seems to finally confess to the other person what’s on their mind:

“Don’t be sad when it’s time to say goodnight / I’ll be there to make sure you sleep tight / I’m your friend when you need a friend / Until there’s nothing left in the world to make you cry.”

The centerpiece of the record is “How to Make a Baby Elephant Float.” A spiritual successor to Kaplan’s equally moving “Our Way to Fall,” “How to Make a Baby Elephant Float” is one of my favorite Yo La Tengo songs and belongs in the pantheon of all-time great love songs.

A tongue-in-cheek examination of love language, the song recounts Kaplan’s and Hubley’s search for genuine verbal displays of affection. The phrase “I love you” is overwrought, so they find intimate expression through inside jokes. Very fitting coming from a band that gets its name from a little-known Mets in-joke.

“And when we’re out, and you say, / ‘It would appear’ / We love and laugh no one else hears / No one at all (at all, at all).”

Where most love songs feature grand romantic gestures, Kaplan decides to find beauty in the mundane and everyday, a lyrical staple that appears throughout Yo La Tengo’s discography.

The groovy, Hubley-led “Winter A-Go-Go” is another highlight and probably the catchiest song on the record. Elevated by unique percussion, resonant vibraphone and delicate organ, the song carefully fuses low-tempo jazz with 1960s pop.

The closest the album gets to a typical Yo La Tengo noise jam is the penultimate track “Let’s Be Still.” Roughly ten-and-a-half minutes, the song begins with arpeggiating guitar noise and dissonant brass and woodwind tones before Parker’s double-bass groove and Hubley’s loose shuffle set the song in motion. The rest of the track has Hubley and Kaplan’s muffled voices harmonizing amongst Mateen, Carter, and Campbell Jr.’s exploratory melodies.

The record’s coda is a cover of the Big Star song, “Take Care,” off their album “Third.” Another addition to the band’s large repertoire of recorded and live covers, “Take Care” is a fitting, bittersweet end to the melancholic beach vacation that is “Summer Sun.”

“This sounds a bit like goodbye / In a way it is, I guess / As I leave your side / We’ve taken in the air / Take care, please / Take care.”

While I understand some of the disappointment around “Summer Sun,” it’s by no means a bad record. Some may find it one-note, but I’m more than happy to sit with its dreamy atmosphere for its hour-long runtime. And while not all the songs are amazing—“Georgia vs. Yo La Tengo” and “Moonrock Mambo” are fun, but would benefit from a little extra energy driving otherwise simple funk jams—any missteps never break the atmosphere, and its high points feature some of the group’s best work to date.

It’s an album that’s greatly benefited from hindsight. Removed from the pressure of needing to continue the streak of one-upping previous acclaimed releases, “Summer Sun” can be appreciated for what it is. Interestingly enough, Wilco and The Flaming Lips also garnered similar criticism for their respective concurrent albums, “A Ghost is Born” and “At War with the Mystics,” for their unevenness and not measuring up to their predecessors.

Any doubt that Yo La Tengo lost their edge with “Summer Sun” was quickly squashed with their adventurous and hilariously-titled 2006 follow-up “I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass,” which featured the return of the group’s heavier sound and new, expanded orchestration.

The last time I saw Yo La Tengo live, they happened to play “Season of the Shark” at the request of a previous night’s audience member. Those who knew the song perked up, as, while it’s still the album’s most popular song, it’s rare to hear the group play anything from “Summer Sun” live. It was like they were playing it for the lucky few who gave that album a chance, those who left themselves in the group’s capable hands and were rewarded with a misunderstood gem.