Photo Ariella Stok

“It’s a Saturday mitzvah,” pipes one of Yo La Tengo’s younger relatives from the front row during a pause in the action of the fifth show of their occasionally annual eight-night Hanukkah gig at Maxwell’s, the 200-capacity Hoboken backroom where they got their start.

“With or without a menorah,” guitarist/singer Ira Kaplan adds, barely glancing at the electric menorah perched on the speaker next to Georgia Hubley’s drums. There is a hand-scrawled “out-of-order” sign affixed to it.

“What does that mean?” the night’s double-secret-special guest—Big Star/Box Tops alt-legend Alex Chilton—inquires.

“She said ‘it’s a Saturday mitzvah,’ which is a good thing,” Kaplan explains. “So, with or without a menorah, it’s a good thing.” He pauses. “Just kind of beatnik jive talk.”

And though that was about as religious as the 24-year-old indie band got, there were, in fact, many good things that night. For starters, there were the scattered “seasonal numbers,” tributes to the “great Jewish songwriters.” On this night, those included Carole King and Gerry Goffin (“Sometime in the Morning” and “Let Me Get Close To You”), Lou Reed (“Femme Fatale”), Blue Oyster Cult (“E.T.I.”) and others drawn from the band’s deep record-obsessive resources.

There was also, of course, Chilton, returning for a second night with the band, one of the week’s many unannounced musical guests, plus NPR staple Sarah Vowell, Saturday Night Live’s still-striking Amy Poehler (in a marginally funny caricature as Kaplan’s Aunt Judith), and the $10 mix du jour by Hubley (going to the same charities 826NYC and Global Child, as the tickets).