Download audio file (Olympians.mp3)
Fuck Buttons – “Olympians”
(from Tarot Sport)

Lately, I’ve been a little reluctant to write too much about new music. Don’t get me wrong, I still think the whole “writing about music” thing has some value, but every time I read another thesaurus-less blogger gullibly slap the same gauche, overreaching adjectives on any moderately promising FLAC that streams across his torrent, or another eager-to-please reviewer try to justify wholly questionable historical antecedents on bands that barely qualify as upstarts for the sake of page hits or guest spots, I cringe. I’ve done it myself. It’s embarrassing. Worse, it’s insincere. As readers, as fans, it’s easy to get worn out and desensitized to repeated claims about the “greatest” this or the “most amazing” that. It stops meaning anything after a while.

And then I hear an album like Tarot Sport, and I think to myself, Well, shit. This is really fucking good. How else would I describe an album like this if I didn’t use words like “epic” and “Vangelis-esque” and “erupting with sweeping, psychotropic grandeur” and “the best album of the fourth quarter of 2009 (so far)”? I can’t. And so I’m back at square one.

I should back up a bit.

I didn’t much care for Street Horrrsing. Idiotic band name. Idiotic haircuts. And the music, the thing behind all the flashy cultural signifiers, was grating, preening, directionless, full of obnoxious brattles and yelps that neither shocked nor awed. But several folks, some of whose opinions I hold in high regard, thought differently. So I bit my tongue.

But when I heard the Buttons were tapping Andrew Weatherall to produce their next album, I softened my guard. Weatherall, after all, was one of the key figures who put the -adelica in Screamadelica, and it seemed unlikely he would make things worse. Now: I don’t want to overstate his importance. It’s possible he did little more than readjust microphone placement in the studio and press “Record.” I don’t know. But the transformation from the teeming mass of Danse Manatee-derivative noise on Street Horrrsing to what we get on Tarot Sport is nothing short of remarkable.

Perhaps the Animal Collective analogy is appropriate. This music goes beyond noise. It’s noisy, for sure, but here the dithering squabble of stereo distortion is spruced up and coupled with the blissful modulation of synthetic sine waves that embrace passionately and meaningfully, resulting in the climactic epiphanies of late-period post-rock (I’m thinking of, for example, Mogwai’s Happy Music for Happy People). Plus, there are the unmistakable tropes of dance music — the lithe, expansive percussion; the trance-inducing swooshes and hypnotically repetitive bleeps and boops — that set my heart racing and pupils dilating. The songs on Tarot Sport follow the structure and benchmarks of older music that I find familiar, and maybe that’s why I’m so willing to give myself over to the easy and well-tested moments of climax, but Fuck Buttons permute their influences here in a way that feels fresh and invigorating. Much like Animal Collective have done of their past few records, Fuck Buttons have taken the primordial, Ur-language universality of noise and pared it with more popular, futuristic forms of songwriting.

Ultimately, this is music that’s meant to be ascendant. Just look at the song titles — “Space Mountain,” “Surf Solar,” “Flight of the Feathered Serpent,” and the granddaddy of them all, “Olympians” — these tracks are designed for climbing over peaks and launching into the atmosphere. And you can feel it when you listen to it — upswing is followed by more upswing, crescendo is piled upon crescendo, and just when you think you’ve plateaued, just when you think you’ve reached as far as you can go, they find a way to take you higher yet. It’s like hopping aboard a Trimaxian Drone Ship and soaring weightlessly through the air at unimaginable speeds while the geometric shapes of developed land below parse and multiply and invert and reveal themselves to be parts of much larger patterns that could only be seen from this new, higher vantage point.

Groan.

I know, it’s all a bit overwrought, but isn’t that why we all subject ourselves to the continual headache that is the hunt for new music? For the occasional and absurdly grandiose “Eureka!” moment of discovery? It’s okay not to be embarrassed by that feeling when you find it.

Download audio file (xx-basicspace.mp3)
The xx – “Basic Space” (buy)

This song hits the spot.

The Fiery Furnaces – “Drive To Dallas”
Download audio file (FF-DriveToDallas.mp3)
(from I’m Going Away)

When I first heard about the Fiery Furnaces’ I’m Going Away, I may have prematurely flipped my lid, as bloggers are wont to do. I presaged the album with a hefty serving of red herrings left by the band and a wildly off-chart “deaf description” of what I hoped it would be, but the truth, and the actual album, are out there now, and it turns out it’s not so outlandish after all. The quirks are well-manicured, the freakouts contained, and, aside from the near-combustible skittishness of the title track, the song structures are remarkably conventional. This may very well turn out to be their Sky Blue Sky — a totally normal, palatable collection of regular old songs that are simply too quaint to dislike.

Of course, “normal” with the Fiery Furnaces only gets you so far. The siblings Friedberger have always belied their pop impulses with willful subterfuge, and even their attempts to adhere to standard chord progressions here can feel like a ploy, like they’ve reached back to the Aaron Copland songbook with fingers crossed. “Drive To Dallas” is a good example of this, straddling the line between the carefully studied schmaltz of a showtune and the harried, taut frustration of a genuine heartbreak ballad. Eleanor traipses along alowly at first, letting the Charlie Brown piano melody mirror her own serviceable but admittedly not great car-themed metaphors about, among others, windshield wipers that can’t wipe away all her tears. But as the tension builds, in a typically Friedbergian vamp, she crams the double-speed ultimatum “You said we had unfinished business but it’s finished now” into a too small compartment that breaks free in a momentary squall of agitated guitars before the song resolves into quiet re-composure.

Compared to other normal, non-prog-megazord bands, this album isn’t going to drop like manna from above, and even compared to the Fiery Furnaces’ discography, I’m Going Away isn’t especially revelatory. Let’s face it: “Ray Bouvier” is no “Chris Michaels,” but even so, that rubbery, bow-legged guitar lick Matthew drops around the 2:00 mark is darn near one of the coolest things he’s ever laid to tape. And that’s really where the pleasure resides with this record — the gracious surprises of clear, emotionally direct, unfrustrating songwriting. This may not be the band’s most impressive output on technical merit, but in a lot of ways it’s the most rewarding. “Even in the Rain,” “Lost at Sea,” “Keep Me in the Dark” — any number of these songs I could see becoming fan favorites and I can’t wait to see them integrated into their live set (if only they make it out to St. Louis soon…).

The official video for “Charmaine Champagne” is below, and somehow watching the video makes the song seem much stranger than it actually is. The truly odd thing about “Charmaine Champagne” is that it’s essentially the same song as “Cups and Punches,” only told from a slightly different POV, tempo, and minus the intentionally bad cross-channel guitar solo and Kevin Barnes-esque squeal.

The Fiery Furnaces: Charmaine Champagne

And don’t forget to stop by the Fiery Furnaces’ home page to read all the deaf descriptions of I’m Going Away. (It’s worth it to go to the actual home page first for one additional gag.)

Baby Teeth – “Big Schools” (buy)
Download audio file (BigSchools.mp3)

You procure (legally!) a copy of Hustle Beach, the new album from Chicago pop-rockers Baby Teeth. Congratulations! You’re ready for an American musical adventure of an exceptional caliber. We hope you’ve brought an enterprising can-do spirit and a positive attitude.

If you are familiar with the brash, bombastic, sometimes nonsensical, always endearing music of Abraham Levitan (nee Pearly Sweets) and company, perhaps having heard The Baby Teeth Album or 2007’s The Simp, these instructions are provided merely as guidelines for your aural enjoyment. If you’ve never heard these guys before, that’s okay! Sit back, relax, and let us take care of everything.

Step one: Pleasantries

Before you do anything crazy, it’s worth it to give this album a spin in the ol’ ceedee player (or a metaphorical spin in the ol’ digital mp3 device of your choosing), maybe while you’re sitting down and making coffee, or while you’re at work (work, work, work – don’t worry, you’ll get that reference once you listen to the album), or however you like to initially encounter good (or even – magnificent! Triumphant! Nonsensical, but endearing!) albums.

Hustle Beach represents a shift for Baby Teeth, one we will entertain to explain later on in the pamphlet (in Mr. Levitan’s own words, no less). Suffice to say that it’s almost like the band is going back in time, or at least trying on different period costumes. The Baby Teeth Album is an off-beat salute to coked-out celebrities, velvet sweet melons, big menacing trucks and other fever-dreamy things. (A long-favorite video from Baby Teeth Album-era Baby Teeth is this greasy tale of a stalker and his fantasy derby girl, with a prominent riff on Madonna’s “Borderline.”)

The Simp was a break-out work, a more sincere – but still ardently and irreverently theatrical – album, with cheeky disco dance-breaks, na-na-na sing-alongs, references to Russian art critics and some of my favorite ultimatums in pop music ever writ (“You’re either on the swim team or you’re not”). It was a showy, glossy, thoroughly modern album.

But Hustle Beach. Well.

The first track, “Big Schools” – that arena-ready, so-pantomime-able opening keyboard line – sounds, even before Abraham belts out the first portentous line of this college rock anthem (“Friday night/Frat house in sight,/A party that I couldn’t get into”), so essentially Springsteen that when Springsteen came up in conversation a few days after I heard this album for the first time, the first song that came to mind was “Big Schools.”

This album (some smarty-pants music critics might call it a “jukebox album”) does not hold its hand of influences too close to its chest. In fact it’s kind of like they don’t know shit about playing poker and they want you to help them figure out what to do, because they’re showing you everything right over their shoulder. I particularly like that about this album: depending on how you look at it, it’s like a Rorschach test (just like Barack Obama!) in which you can hear damn near anything you want, or a reflecting pool, in which you can hear shades of just about everything in the Great Pop Songbook of the late-20^th Century, from Queen to Cake to Billy Joel to Otis Redding to Prince to Cheap Trick to David Bowie to The Beatles to, in ample evidence, The Boss.

One of my favorite tracks on this album – in fact, I’ll go ahead and not mince words, it’s one of the best tracks on this album – is “I Hope She Won’t Let Me,” a Vox-drenched ballad in three-part harmony and six-eight time that is as old-school pool hall soul as “Let it Roll” (my other favorite, and the other best, song) is genuine-article slow-burn hair-band anthem – it’s a song I’ve called upon, in many dark and difficult hours, to bring me strength. I know that sounds crazy, but tell me honestly – you’ve felt the same way about “Don’t Stop Believin’,” haven’t you?

The more absurd touches that are Baby Teeth’s calling card are still here, like on “Snake Eyes,” a droning, off-key defense of some lady named – uh – Snake Eyes. (“If you’re thinkin’ you know about Snake Eyes/ … You’re right!” “If you’re thinkin’ you’re gonna touch Snake Eyes/ …. You’re wrong!”) It sounds ridiculous. It IS ridiculous. It is also a riot.

But in general, Baby Teeth is trying something that’s new for them, but pretty old-fashioned as the story of modern songwriting goes: telling the truth, and confronting those age-old issues – love, work, ageing, insecurity, uncertainty and defeat – head-on.

And I don’t just know this because I’m a music writer. I read about it! On a blog. Which brings us to step two.

Step 2: Scholarship

If you’ve listened to Hustle Beach a few times now (and regardless of how you feel about it, I bet you can at least concede that it’s damn catchy), and you’re struggling to suss it out, or would just like to learn more, hop on over to the 52 Teeth blog.

Hustle Beach, as it turns out, is the final product of a whole year’s worth of writing one new song every week. Come hail or high water, Abraham clunked out a shaky little demo, popped it on WordPress and – to the joy of archivists, historians, and scavenging music writers like me – wrote about its varied influences, ripped-off melodies, lyrical levels of meaning and whatever else struck his fancy.

Not all of the songs on Hustle Beach were on 52 Teeth first, and obviously, not every song on 52 Teeth made it onto the record. But a few are there, and reading the artist’s thoughts on them, after a few listens to the whole work of art, is mighty edifying.

I’ve learned, for instance, that the (genius) first line of “The Part You Play” (“You walked into the party/Like it was your yacht”) is actually a play on the first line of the Carly Simon song “You’re So Vain,” and that the title track “Hustle Beach” is an attempt to merge the influence of reggae, David Foster Wallace, neuroticism about work ethic, Andy Pratt, The Eagles, Allan Touissant and M.I.A. Fun! It’s also the source of, yes, my belief that the men of Baby Teeth are attempting to do something a little more direct in their songmanship. Again, from his entry on Hustle Beach, Abraham writes:

The lyrics represent my attempt to write more directly. Every line was scrutinized to make sure that I could understand what it was about. This is how I’d like to write from now on.

Abraham reads a lot (as you may have realized if you made the connection that “The Swede” is a reference to a Phillip Roth novel. I did not), and his writing is charming, so if you’re the scholarly, researchin’ type, you might find yourself, as I have, lost in the archives for an hour or so.

Step 3: Forgetting

When you’ve thought all there is to think about Hustle Beach – there’s a lot, although to be fair to this blog’s very indulgent editors, probably no more than there is to think about most other good albums – you should take a few deep breaths, cleanse your palette with some other album (maybe one that you know and love well, so you won’t get wrapped up), then pack up Hustle Beach and take it with you on a good old-fashioned American road trip (maybe to a beach).

I have always allowed myself to give in to Baby Teeth most wholly in the car, and in fact have both their first and second albums burned onto a single CD (which never, ever leaves my car). I turn up the volume, sometimes little by little as I become more and more enveloped in the bravado, showmanship and silly earnestness of the music. And then I drive a little faster.

Driving along to Baby Teeth allows me to forget all of the garbage that I sometimes feel obliged to project upon an album, to lose my critical mind, to strip away all of the influences, necessary comparisons and value judgments. With Baby Teeth, I usually remember, subsequently, that even their most derivative songs are derived from classic, timeless works. The smart, snappy, slightly irreverent, somewhat scholarly, sometimes nonsensical, always endearing way in which Hustle Beach folds all of those derivatives into itself makes it, I have to say, a classic, in its own right.

Download audio file (Phaseone-Confessio.mp3)
Phaseone – “Confessio Amantis”

Download audio file (Phaseone-LoveTest.mp3)
Phaseone – “Love Test (Only)”

When I interviewed Phaseone back in February, he told me his new album Thanks But No Thanks was going to drop in just a few weeks. Well, a few weeks turned into a few months, and finally, last Thursday, he dropped the new album with a simple tweet. So much for breaking news.

Creatively, TBNT is night and day from its 42-track predecessor of digitized neo-soul, Mad Weight. The album opens with “Marty & Sonietta,” a track built around a lattice of repeated synth lines and mechanical gurgles that call to mind French composer Jean-Michel Jarre, and even when the percussion kicks in on the blended follow-up “Temp Tags/Starfox,” the upward lilt of the keyboards keep it sounding more like Black Moth Super Rainbow at their poppiest than anything that might reflect Phase’s hip-hop work in the past. That’s not to say he’s left his roots untouched, by any means. One of the strongest tracks on the album, “Love Test (Only),” comes from the same brave new school of robo-soul that Kanye founded with 808s & Heartbreak (which, yes, is arguably more electro-pop than hip-hop, but I’m not here to play referee over minor inter-genre squabbles). Downtempo, ambient hip-hop, electronic, dubstep, soundtrack to a theoretical sci-fi thriller, whatever you want to call it — this is mighty good stuff.

Plus, one of the tracks posted above contains a reference to a massive late-14th century narrative poem, which the Lit dork in me feels obliged to point out. Can you guess which one?

Click here to download Thanks But No Thanks.

More:
Phaseone Remixes – Panda Bear, Burial, & Grouper

Phaseone: Interview + Jay Dee Remix

Download audio file (GB-TillyLingers.mp3)
Grace Basement – “Tilly Lingers”
(from Gunmetal Gray)

It’s one thing for a band to proclaim Harry Nilsson and XTC among their primary influences; it’s quite another to follow through and deliver the goods. Gunmetal Gray, the sophomore effort from St. Louis’ Grace Basement, hearkens back to the better features of any number of pure pop purveyors — a more creatively concise Jon Brion; a Ben Kweller not inclined to indulge his hokum country fancies — but at no point does it feel reduced to pastiche. With impeccably layered harmonies, urbane arrangements, and lead songwriter Kevin Buckley’s deft fiddling, Gunmetal Gray has turned out to be one of most pleasant surprises of 2009.

I’ve been listening to this album since April, when the band temporarily released it as a free download from their website. The download was split like an old record into two tracks, an A side and a B side. I don’t know if the vinyl analogy was intentional, but considering how meticulously composed each individual track was put together, the overarching emotional flow of the album as a whole is remarkably fluid. From the boisterous and baroque opener “There He Goes” to the wry resignation of “Tilly Lingers” through to the orchestral flourishes of “Land of Endless Change,” the band, only recently conceived of as a four-piece, puts on a consistent and exuberant display of power pop prowess.

It seems the timeframe for nabbing the disc as a free download has passed, but you can still order it online from Undertow Music or, what I would recommend, buy it direct from the band tonight at their CD release show at Off Broadway. Boston’s Everyday Visuals and St. Louis’ excellent Old Lights are opening.

I’ve already let my nerd flag fly high when I trumpeted the announcement of the upcoming Fiery Furnaces record, but what I didn’t tell you at the time (because it wasn’t announced until the following week) was that the siblings Friedberger were asking their fans to submit “deaf descriptions” of the new album. That is, they want you to review the album without having listened to it first. They will then take the deaf descriptions and somehow turn them into a “‘complete’ fan-made, word-only, entirely-unrelated, alternate version of I’m Going Away,” which also be released the same day as the actual album, July 21. Best of all, they don’t even have to be in English!

You know me, I couldn’t resist. What I submitted is copied below — it’s a blend of divinely prophesized predictions and blind wish-fulfillment fantasies. You can submit your deaf descriptions to thefieryfurnacesemail [at] gmail [dot] com.

———————–

Delirious doesn’t even begin to describe it. For a group already well known for their staggering gumption and spitfire hubris, the Fiery Furnaces have attempted on their latest studio album I’m Going Away to recreate the entirety of American popular music, from Dixie land brass bands to Lady Gaga, in an epic experiment just shy of 80 minutes. But this isn’t simply a linear retelling of the story, where Robert Johnson walks up to the crossroads and takes a left; instead, in the Friedbergers’ vision, all possible paths are explored at the same time. The result is a complete alternate history, in which salty sea shanties are sung in the dusty plains of Texas, carousel waltzes are regular staples in underground hardcore shows, and Burl and Charles Ives share not only a surname, but a bunk bed and a four-track.

The album starts with a sputtering drum machine and dueling barroom pianos. The title track, a traditional folk tune about disappointment and longing, serves as a departure point for the westward bound story arc of the album takes. In it, Eleanor sings of a man who stole all her money, which she didn’t find very funny, as her justification for going away. The album progresses on “Driving to Dallas,” where the railroad rhythm of the title track picks up steam until it’s moving at the speed of light-rail, nailed down with an industrious one-chord hammer-on rock’n’roll riff and whirring flashes of pedal steel and celeste. Spitting sibilance and Teutonic tongue-twisters, Eleanor begins to unveil some of the specific characters who crop up in this loosely themed album, which ultimately involves vivid tales of encounters with mischievous fur trappers, reluctant oil barons, theosophist lumberjacks, virgin soldiers, and depressive swim instructors.

One of the more memorable characters is Ray Bouvier, who first appears on the ballad “Ray Bouvier.” It’s an unusual story about an introverted carpenter whose arranged marriage is threatened by his increasing obsession with Willard Van Orman Quine’s theory of semantic holism. Perhaps not unintentionally, the song is complemented with a jarring guitar solo that echoes the work of Quine’s punk rock nephew, Robert.

Occasionally, the slapdash hybridization of styles the Furnaces experiment with turn out beautifully. Case in point: “The End is Near,” which is essentially an 8-bit blues jam with a wicked electric banjo breakdown. The modest incorporation of autotune during the second bridge assures this song’s success as the album’s lead single. At other times, the experiment is less successful. The ragtime/afro-funk fusion of “Charmaine Champagne,” for instance, is a series of syncopated snafus that is only salvaged from complete humiliation thanks to Jason Loewenstein’s dexterous handling of a vintage Theremin throughout the chorus.

There’s a lot to wrap your head around on this record. From the phantasmagoric “Lost at Sea,” which features two distinct mixes of polytonal power chords shredding simultaneously through each speaker channel, to the paisley pop of “Cups and Punches,” which features Matthew Friedberger rapping – yes, rapping – throughout the verses, I’m Going Away is easily the Fiery Furnaces’ most ambitious and least focused album to date. Perhaps we could have asked for a little less sousaphone and a little more wah-pedalled organ, but as far as summer albums are concerned, this one’s a blockbuster.

——————–

Further Fiery Furnaces Fan Fiction:

I’m Going Away: New Fiery Furnaces album gets me all sorts of excited

A Close Encounter with the Fiery Furnaces, 10/29/07, Blueberry Hill, St. Louis

Matthew Friedberger – Winter Women (Summer Version)

Matthew Friedberger – Holy Ghost Language School

“Hazards of Love (The Prettiest Whistles Won’t Wrestle the Thistles Undone)” from Hazards of Love. (buy)

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a review of the Decemberists’ new album Hazards of Love in versified form for Detour. It appears among other excellent reviews, but I thought I’d let it stand alone for you, our dear readers.

From Portland sprang a band whose name won Indie music fame.
The Decemberists won boundless fans and Meloy an idol became,
With tales of orphans and aerialists,
Bagmen, ankles, and deadly trysts,
And, oh, Valerie Plame.

Accordions and zithers, how the band does compliment
This prolix lyrics paragon, his erudite intent.
To greater eccentricity resigned
To a major label they signed
And then, oh, The Hazards of Love.
You’ll learn soon enough,
Unless you’re fanatic this rock operatic confounds.

Poor Margaret, our heroine, her tale of ruin told.
A forest queen, shape-shifting beast, a rake profanely bold,
Evoked with vibrant verbs and nouns.
And at the end Marge drowns.
Oh, the hazards of love!

“The Rake’s Song” is a highlight, with its triumphant “alright”s!
And “Annan Water”’s driving strums buoys a lover’s river flight
In “Margaret in Captivity”
Our heroine survives
Even though the intro sounds
Like “Wanted Dead or Alive.”
Hmm. The Hazards of Love.

With all of its ambitious pluck no new fans will Hazards win.
But we the vassals of this lord of rhyme still widely grin.
With stars or numbers I will not bore.
The Post-Rockist doesn’t rate or score.
Oh, The Hazards of Love,
You’ll learn soon enough,
There’s plenty of killer (and killers) but filler redounds.

Peter Bjorn & John – “I Want You!”
(from Living Thing)
Download audio file (PBJ-IWantU.mp3)

No tambourine. I distinctly remember that from an interview a few years back with Björn Yttling about Writer’s Block and the smashing success of “Young Folks”: as a band, they made a conscious decision to avoid the use of tambourines (instead, they used bongos). But the larger point he was trying to make was that they wanted to avoid the trappings of most rock & roll songwriting clichés — no false buildups, no explosive endings that have nothing to do with a song’s beginning, no moving a song from point A to point B, no cheap surprises, and most importantly, no tambourines. If a song was worth listening to, it would be worth listening to from the very start.

This aesthetic they’ve developed, as pop minimalists, puts constraints on what they can do as a band, but it also forces them to be more creative with less. A simple gesture can take on grand meanings; an echo pedal on a solitary guitar note can make it sound expansive; a sparse, programmed kick drum can feel like a nervous heart beating in its cage; a droopy bass blurt can yearn for Graceland. There are going to be listeners disappointed in Living Thing (where are the hits?), but for me, I find the album endlessly inhabitable. I hear a band making choices, and choosing to do something different with music; distilling pop music down to its essentials and discovering something new at its core that I had been too busy to notice before.

Dan Deacon – “Snookered”
(from Bromst)
Download audio file (Snookered.mp3)

“There is a mountain of snow, up past the big glen…”

I’m not going to lie, every time I listen to Bromst I keep expecting the chipmunk chorus of “Wham City” to erupt behind the next collision of orchestral synths and inhumanly fast percussion. It feels like it’s going to be over the next hill, but always manages to stay just out of reach.

But while I may not get to “Wham City”‘s mountain of snow, on “Snookered” it feels like we’ve been invited to the backdoor entrance of Brian Eno’s Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy). Dan Deacon is still operating with the same old tools, but instead of uncontrolled technicolor hyperdrive, he’s exercising restraint and finesse, demonstrating his skills as a producer auteur. It’s no surprise we’re hearing more comparisons to composers like Steve Reich and Terry Riley on this new record: compared to Spiderman of the Rings, there are rightful allusions to grandeur on Bromst. Maybe he’s realizing that he’s getting too big for small club performances in the future, which would be a sad thing to pass, but if music like this started populating our orchestra halls I’d probably go out to the symphony more.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs – “Zero”
(from It’s Blitz!)
Download audio file (Zero.mp3)

I don’t know if I’m ever going to recapture that feeling I first felt when I heard “Bang!” eight years ago, but “Zero” is as close to a perfect pop single as the Yeah Yeah Yeahs have ever released. Nick Zinner and Brian Chase get plenty of respect for cementing the band’s new sound: lean, glossy, patent vinyl New Wave with sexual predator dance prowess. But it’s Karen O who reasserts herself as a justifiable 21st century punk rock icon — taunting, vulnerable, confident, seductive, and dangerous. And that note she hits at 3:11 is just, wow, too ecstatic for words. This song is like a feral tiger on a leash, ferocious but restrained, ready to break loose at the slightest provocation.