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| Aw. L'il scamps. (Like circa 2000.) |
“Karen is great because I just believe her when she sings, which is very, very important.”
- Brian (“Danger Mouse”) Burton
Given how much just about anyone to whom I’ve mentioned Yeah Yeah Yeahs refracts the band through the person of Karen O (aka, Karen Lee Orzolek), I’m equal parts surprised and happy that they never wound up as Karen O & Yeah Yeah Yeahs. The marketing arm can’t win ‘em all.
While I had the same personal entry into Yeah Yeah Yeahs as everyone else – e.g., “Maps” (purposely excluded from the playlist) – how many of those same people would have missed that song entirely unless they bought Rock Band 2 (spending all that time in the 2000s being a dad meant not getting out much)? When it comes to band like Yeah Yeah Yeahs, that apparently meant missing one hell of a live set. An interview that came out around the time Karen O was touring to support Crush Songs (2014) – something she referred to as a collection of demos – contrasted that person with the Karen O most fans know:
“…not what I was expecting after three years of watching her screech across stages in wrecked Chuck Taylors and tattered mini-skirts, pumping sweat and posturing with a devilish grin of smeared lipstick, her glittery eye shadow smudged and on the move across her face.”
A later Q&A with The Guardian makes that sound like what happened after she slowed down (fwiw, that’s the best source/history I found for Karen O or Yeah Yeah Yeahs).
- Brian (“Danger Mouse”) Burton
Given how much just about anyone to whom I’ve mentioned Yeah Yeah Yeahs refracts the band through the person of Karen O (aka, Karen Lee Orzolek), I’m equal parts surprised and happy that they never wound up as Karen O & Yeah Yeah Yeahs. The marketing arm can’t win ‘em all.
While I had the same personal entry into Yeah Yeah Yeahs as everyone else – e.g., “Maps” (purposely excluded from the playlist) – how many of those same people would have missed that song entirely unless they bought Rock Band 2 (spending all that time in the 2000s being a dad meant not getting out much)? When it comes to band like Yeah Yeah Yeahs, that apparently meant missing one hell of a live set. An interview that came out around the time Karen O was touring to support Crush Songs (2014) – something she referred to as a collection of demos – contrasted that person with the Karen O most fans know:
“…not what I was expecting after three years of watching her screech across stages in wrecked Chuck Taylors and tattered mini-skirts, pumping sweat and posturing with a devilish grin of smeared lipstick, her glittery eye shadow smudged and on the move across her face.”
A later Q&A with The Guardian makes that sound like what happened after she slowed down (fwiw, that’s the best source/history I found for Karen O or Yeah Yeah Yeahs).
Yeah Yeah Yeahs (“YYY”) have as many members as words in their name, and the other two are Nick Zinner (guitar/keys, and an impressive history with collaboration) and Brian Chase (drums, but also (possibly) the biggest musical chops of the bunch). The band formed in New York in 2000, by way of Oberlin and Bard Colleges. Zinner and Karen O found Chase after their original drummer backed out, and after they “decided to ‘shake things up a bit’ by forming a ‘trashy, punky, grimy’ band modeled after the art student, avant-punk bands Karen O was exposed to at Oberlin.”
In a nice bit of symmetry, YYY’s story should sound familiar to anyone who played Rock Band: they spent three years working up material, touring and opening for bigger artists (the heaviest hitters, The Strokes and The White Stripes), and releasing an EP or two before putting out Fever to Tell in 2003. It sounds like they never left the map for the length of the aughts, but the hiatus that started after touring 2013’s Mosquito still hasn’t ended – though they did play a surprise show in 2016 after both David Bowie and Prince died, where she teamed up with TV on the Radio’s Tunde Adibempe. Karen O had something lovely to say about that:
“I gotta say, what religion is to a lot of people, music is for me. When Prince died, just being with each other and playing music together — it was one of the most healing, fortifying experiences.”
That same Rolling Stone interview “supports” Karen O’s 2019 album Lux Prima, a collaboration with Brian Burton (aka, Danger Mouse), so she’s still at work. It also shows why she holds (held) most people’s attention within Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Contrast her florid, energetic phrasing in that interview – i.e., the outlandish charisma you get with lead singers - with the notes Zinner and Chase offered as insights on the making of Mosquito to Stereogum (that said, if you’re a production nut, Chase throws you a couple meat bones). Both Chase and Zinner continue working as well, but they’re operating behind the scenes.
Just to note it, Zinner has a side project called Head Wound City that I’ve penciled for attention at some future date. Also, even if I didn’t hold onto anything from Lux Prima, it struck me as a good version of a certain kind of album. The title track lasted longest on the playlist (which probably goes back to Burton’s comment on it: “Let’s see what happens if we just create this place, this droll, dreamy, cinematic place, and see what it turns into.”), and if you listen to that and “Turn to the Light” and “Woman,” those give you a pretty good taste of what you hear on Lux Prima. (Fwiw, my love of “Pretty Prizes” drew me to Daniele Luppi’s 2017 Milano, which ft. both Karen O and Parquet Courts; I kept “Mount Napoleon” for the playlist.)
To close on Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and the stuff I caught up on this past week, I spent most of my time on Fever to Tell, It’s Blitz and Mosquito. To work from front-to-back, if Lux Prima works for you, you’ll probably take to It’s Blitz before the other two. At least a couple tracks – “Zero” and “Soft Shock” – should tickle fans of 80s pop rock, lots of synth and texture; it’s the texture elements (and Karen O’s vocals) that lends what kinship it has to Lux Prima. Mosquito, meanwhile, serves up something else. Stereogum’s reviewer sums it up nicely:
“The sound of a band treading water? A bold push in a new direction? A tepid attempt to get back to their roots? A beautiful, albeit, schizophrenic mess?”
Revise the second question to “a bold push in several directions” (which brings in “schizophrenic”), and I’m on board. The songs that hark back to Fever to Tell – for me, “Sacrilege” and “Mosquito” possess that jagged avant-garde vibe (also, the cover) – can’t manage the wild abandon of the original. YYY buried my favorite tracks on Mosquito toward the bottom, both of them slower numbers that sounded like evolution, but in a more natural direction for a band hitting its 10th anniversary; rubbing off the pop polish from YYY’s It’s Blitz days only makes me like ‘em more. That includes “Despair” and (with the bonus cameo by Dr. Octagon) “Buried Alive.” That pattern carried through from It’s Blitz - as in their best tracks came late: both “Hysteric” and “Runaway” come across as growth, or just a band doing the holy work of “trying shit.”
Fever to Tell, though, hits more of the right buttons. Part of me puts that down to them approaching that album with the clearest sense of what they wanted to accomplish – e.g., being the ‘trashy, punky, grimy’ band they set out to be. Yeah Yeah Yeahs produced an album loud, brash, bold, and fierce enough on every level to give the feeling the whole thing could rattle apart at random intervals (personal theory: the calm of “Maps” helped it stand out). Of the nine YYY songs chosen for the playlist, five come from Fever to Tell; I could've added more, but that becomes just re-posting the album at some point. While they’re all up-tempo (and laced full of bursting guitar), they all have different qualities: the full-time ragged intensity of “Tick,” the loping swagger on “Man,” the careening tale of mutual destruction in “Cold Light,” the saucy “fuck you” of “Black Tongue,” and, personal favorite, the 2:00 soft-loud masterpiece – and this is all the way down to Karen O shouting guitar sounds as a chorus, “Pin.”
The album you like out of all of those – even if it’s Show Your Bones, which I barely listened to – will depend on your taste and mood. Yeah Yeah Yeahs left you plenty to work with. And that’s it for this week’s featured artist, but I want to drop in links for the rest of the playlist, maybe a line or two of commentary. In the order they show up on the playlist:
Freddie Gibbs/Madlib
“Giannis,” which I think just came out, and it’s got Anderson .Paak on it. Gibbs is new to me, and I’m working through him, but I don’t rank a lot of producers over Madlib. I also included “Harold’s” from Gibbs/Madlib’s 2014 collaboration, Pinata.
Brazilian Girls – “Pussy” and “Lazy Lover”
Just dipped into this group, and liked…some of what I heard. Electronic heavy, and they play up the Latin angle (though “Pussy” is more Caribbean). For stoned people who like dancing.
This band makes absolutely no effort to be liked. It’s bare-bones and sloppy musically, and it’s designed to piss off half the people who hear it. More compelling than listenable, but I dig it.
The latter two come from this band’s pivotal album, Painful. A lot of texture madness, but also vivid and, for lack of a better word, surprising. They’re the rare band that keeps you guessing. Except the cover song. They’re very faithful on that one.
Madvillian – “Rhinestone Cowboy”
Incredible song/album/collaboration. Fucking amazing…
Geto Boys – “Mind Playing Tricks on Me”
I’m not trying to be crass or disrespectful, but I think someone died, so they made the news and that made me check them out. Hip hop, a little older, but right up my alley.
Adult Mom – “Sorry I Was Sorry” and “Full Screen”
I loved “Survival” enough to circle back to them. It’s mainly low-to-mid-tempo, very twangy and it can be a little precious. But it’s also smart, fairly precise and they write really well.
The Big Moon – “Sucker”
Whoops. That stayed on accidentally. Good indie pop/rock. Might be really good. I wanted to give ‘em more time.
All right. That should be everything. Welcome to the new format, hope people like it. This one was a bit rushed, but this project feels sustainable and useful. For now. Till next week.
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