The new Yo La Tengo CD/2XLP/digital album Popular Songs (OLE 856-1,2) could be the bravest musical statement to date in a career full of them. Recorded in Hoboken and Nashville in early 2009 with longtime associate Roger Mountenot, Popular Songs finds the trio of Georgia Hubley, Ira Kaplan and James McNew at the height of their creative powers, fashioning an epic work that’s cooly confident as it is wildly adventurous. Even for longtime followers of Yo La Tengo, the stylistic range encompassed on Popular Songs is startling ; the band aren’t merely conversant with rock & pop subgenres stretching into the double digits, but their unselfconscious mastery of such is simply uncanny.