The first time I saw the Yeah Yeah Yeahs was in 2001, when they were opening for Liars at the Magic Stick. The band was in shambles, but it was less a cultivated image than the state of affairs they were in. Karen O was sloppy drunk, falling all over the place, spitting beer into the audience, and inserting the microphone into her mouth like it was some sort of not-so-subtle phallic stand-in, because, well, what the hell else was she going to do? The band only had five recorded songs to their name and a few rough ideas for others. The mix, as usual, was bleeding distortion and a group of pill-popping roughnecks from Rockford had shown up in their pre-ironic trucker hats wanting to “dance,” which, in their western Michigan parlance, meant thrashing into their neighbors for forty minutes at a time.
The show was a mess. But it was a beautiful mess, like you could tell you were watching the gross cultivation of something spectacular, something much bigger than anyone in the room could have imagined. The coarseness was only a result of the format not being able to contain their energy. In fact, the only boffed note came at the very end when the band went into their one ballad, “Our Time.” Karen O, apparently mistaking the crowd’s roughhousing for lyrical attentiveness, stopped singing and directed the microphone to the audience, hoping that we would fill in the chorus. Instead, nothing. Crickets.
Karen O didn’t have that problem last night at the Pageant. From the opening number — the sleek, stealth “Runaway” off the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ newest album It’s Blitz! — the audience was enthralled by her presence. Striking exagerrated yoga poses in a patterned kimono and zig-zag tights, a maniacal red grin peeking out under her shroud of hair, O exuded poise and confidence. The rest of the band — guitarist Nick Zinner, drummer Brian Chase, and miscellaneous support from Imaad Wasif — clad all in black, faded into the background.
The setlist was ferocious. Veering back to the crude, pummeling “Man” from Fever To Tell to the hip-hop swagger of Show Your Bones‘ “Phenomena” to “Dull Life,” which, despite being something of a sleeper on the new record, was absolutely riveting live. Chase and Zinner devoured the rhythm like a pack of ravenous wolves, feral and primal, but also painstakingly methodical. And that’s part of the key to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ evolving success — their minimal set up, rather than boxing them in stylistically, allows them the agility to move swiftly through ideologically opposed genres, dance to rock, crunk to punk, without getting caught in any one rut.
The other part, of course, is Karen. Crouching, sneering, thrusting, lunging, holding her hands always just out of reach — the sold-out crowd was infatuated, and she returned the love. On “Black Tongue,” she bounced around the stage wearing a splattered neon shirt and plastic orange sneeze guard around her waist, triggering ejaculations of Y-shaped confetti at precise climactic moments throughout the song, while turning the mic over to the front row to shout in the verse’s joyful “yeah yeah yeah”s. Oh, it was naughty, but it wasn’t the least bit shameful.
Karen O went through more costume alterations than Fischerspooner. Many of the outfits seemed specifically designed for certain songs: the giant gold necklace/frock for “Gold Lion”; the awesomely “KO”-bedazzled leather jacket from the “Zero” video (“put your leather, leather, leather on, on, on”); the glow-in-the-dark pink wrestler’s mask for “Heads Will Roll,” the first song of the encore. While all these costumes served to heighten the bizarre spectacle the band was putting on underneath the giant inflatable eyeball that overlooked the crowd, the real emotional heart of the show came at its most stripped-down moment. During a quiet, acoustic rendition of “Maps” during the encore, Zinner’s guitar chord cut out. When the stage help rushed out to fix the problem, Karen stopped them. “I think we can handle this alone,” she said. This time, unlike eight years earlier in Detroit, the audience knew all the words.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs – “Y Control” at the Pageant, St. Louis, 6/2/09
SETLIST
Runaway
Man
Phenomena
Dull Life
Black Tongue
Kiss Kiss
Cheated Hearts
Skeletons
Soft Shock
Gold Lion
Zero
Turn Into
Y Control
Encore:
Heads Will Roll
Maps (acoustic)
Date with the Night
Scope some amazing shots of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Pageant performance here.
One Comment
Sounds like a great show, I’m glad their were no more GD Rockford Rams to mess everything up!