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Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Fever to Tell
It's impossible to sit down and write about the Yeah
Yeah Yeahs without acknowledging the media
scrum/frenzy/add favourite cliche as appropriate that
has surrounded the latest NBT-band (that's Next Big
thing, for those not enslaved by the music press).
Now that that's out of the way, let's see what we've
actually got here. Okay, they wear the NBT mantle well
enough without actually being it. Come to think of it,
the last really big thing was Westlife, and, before
that, Oasis, so no harm done there. They've got
everything else, though: the Strokesy fringes, the
Stripesy boy-girl-do-they-don't-they intrigue, plenty
of gun-slinging attitude and at least one eye each on
their retro credentials. Oh, and they make one hell of
a sound.
Opener 'Rich, Rich, Rich' is a good example. As Karen
O's finely pitched bitch/coquette shtick creams a few
indie-boy pants, non-stop guitar waves of reverb, wail
and squall, all laced with drumming strong enough to
drive an arctic truck into, pound through the eardrums
and into the pineal gland. It's like the dumb-and-bass
of The Donnas squaring up to CBGB sleaze, moments
before all hell brakes loose. 'Date With The Night'
cranks it up again with explosions of white noise, a
cat-o-nine-tails of a riff and, out of nowhere, a
disco hustle, yet another reminder, alongside Electric
Six and Hot Hot Heat, that the early 80s had a purpose
after all. And 'Man' keeps up it's end of the bargain
with the funkiest cock-rock this side of Aerosmith in
their white-nostrilled prime.
Sadly, though, a one-trick pony can't run forever, and
when 'Black Tongue' makes a bad job of reinventing
Tina Turner's 'Nutbush City Limits', you know the Yeah
Yeah Yeahs have flogged the joke onto it's last legs.
It all gets a bit silly with 'Pin', with it's chorus
of guitar noises, previously the intellectual property
of air guitarists. Heed my words, Karen O, singing
"Bwawm-bwawm-bwawm-bwawm-bwawm-bwawm-bwawm,
duhdoo-duhdoo-duhdoo-duhdoo" is not cool, no matter
how hard you posture.
'No No No' helps matters by dispensing with the disco
gimmick and stripping proceedings down to watertight
trash-punk, all desperation and paranoia, but then the
Yeah Yeah Yeahs give themselves both barrels in the
feet by tacking on two minutes of swirly, spacey
outro. Some people might call it artistic freedom, but
then again, some people have the critical faculties of
a wet poodle. Ditch the warblings and it'll be a
monster summer single. Maps is the obligatory
down-tempo, love-lorn number: "They don't love you
like I do", sings Karen. It's not their forte, and a
quirky hidden track really doesn't help dispel the
feeling of anti-climax.
So, it's not "the best debut since The Strokes"
(thanks, NME, the voice of reason as always), but,
even without repeating material from last year's EP,
the Yeah Yeah Yeahs show some kind of X-factor. If
they manage to lay off the hype, they just might get a
breakthrough fourth album.
Sam Boland
About the Author
Sam Boland writes the occasional piece of freelance journalism.
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