Yeah Yeah Yeahs live live live

Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Riviera, Chicago
Friday, April 14, 2006

Chapter Two, the Second Act, the Sophomore effort; these things take on an almost mythical proportion when used in the Rock milieu. And if your band was birthed on hype and word-of-mouth buzz, than you can also add razor-sharp scrutiny to the aforementioned hyperbole.

Those are just a few of the obstacles that currently face the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. On tour to support their second, surprisingly demur long-player, Show Your Bones, the Brooklyn trio (augmented on this trek by multi-instrumentalist and opening act Imaad Wasif) blew into town for a sold-out engagement at the Riviera Friday night.

Bounding around the stage in a gold lamé jumpsuit and rainbow facepaint straight off of a Visage album cover, charismatic frontwoman Karen O. seemed determined to reclaim her former It Girl status. What she lacks in technical prowess, she more than compensates for with punk-infused caterwauls and an if-I-can-do-this-so-can-you projection.

Lucky for her, even when those traits fail her, there’s a wickedly proficient band behind her waiting to sweep up her eye glitter. Guitarist Nick Zinner took the new material to unexpected heights. “Gold Lion,” the first single, sounds tepid and innocuous on album. But live, his pearl black Strat squeezed out torrents of notes and squalls of white noise that threatened to blow the wafer-thin, mightily coifed ax man of his perch. “Phenomenon”‘s herky-jerk rhythm benefited greatly from Wasif’s big-bottomed bass lines and the thunderous battery of drummer Brian Chase. That, combined with material like “Y Control” and “Black Tongue” from 2003’s debut (Fever To Tell), simply reminded how this art-punk unit has gotten so far on so little.

What proved more problematic were the quieter moments from Bones. “Warrior” and “Turn Into” are a few of the handful of ballads that, in the safety of a recording studio, sound inviting and warm. Live, however, they were treated to audience indifference and rendered almost inaudible over the din of crowd chatter and clinking liquor bottles.

And just when it seemed the band might be losing a battle to a murder of short attention-span-addled crows, they’d turn to their strengths. “Maps,” the accidental, at one time ubiquitous alterna-hit, brought everyone right back into the fold. Although the song’s claustrophobic intimacy got lost in translation, Zinner’s over-the-top coda was almost outdone by Chase’s cymbal smashing that could easily have been misinterpreted as malicious intent.

But the one constant was O. Always the tempest that managed to sneak into the harbor, undetected, until it was too late to escape the path of her destruction. At one point during “Cheated Hearts” she feigned a playful striptease before declaring sometimes she thinks she’s “bigger than the sound.” And although her raging band threatened to make a liar of her, it was never more apparent this banshee wasn’t going down without a fight.

— Curt Baran

Category: Live Reviews, Weekly