Brisbane’s pop-punk upstarts Two Times Shy are soaring lofty heights as they let loose their …
Exhibitionistic and dramatically charged, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs were explosive. They may have benefited from rock’s revival, but they weren’t intent on sailing in its wind.
Armed with punk’s defiance and rock’s blind conviction, they threw themselves into the decadent present. The band could play at being the cool rockers of ages past. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs were here to deliver their era’s most brilliant and devastating moments.
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2003’s Fever To Tell was their breakthrough. But dial back a few years to 2000. Even from the get-go, this group was going to be different.
Nick Zinner was a veteran of two kinds of bands, most were wilfully obscure and others had come with more commercial aspirations but never quite made it. A talented musician, he’d all but given up on the business end.
Karen Orzolek bore a double curse, she’d grown up in New Jersey, the shy daughter of a Korean mother and Polish-American father. Due to a straight-laced upbringing and terminal outsider status, one way or another she’d always been on the margins. The quiet one.
And so, hemmed in by the years-long yearning to break loose, when the opportunity came she sung her heart out. Reserved or raging, she had instinct. Whether aping the role of rock stud, party girl or wounded lover, she projected herself upon the world with a volcanic presence.
Fever To Tell packs thrills but also aching pains.
Whether by nature or design she was punk. Sweat sodden, untutored and lost in the anarchic moment. Her berserk and self-destructive mania threatened to be bigger than the music itself. She rocked. Unselfconsciously. As any good vocalist should, but we’re getting ahead. Both Zinner and O had attended New York University. Nick studied photography, Karen film. They met through mutual acquaintances at a local bar. They jammed … Karen knew little about musicianship, but the pair found instant chemistry. Together they formed Unitard, a freak folk duo and a far cry from powerhouse rock. It wasn’t long before Karen suggested a new direction: Rock‘n’roll. Within a few hours, they had their first songs. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs were born.
Brian Chase was a quick addition, adding further credence to the ‘college band’ identity he’d roomed in the same dorm as Karen at Oberlin, Ohio back in the ‘90s. Like Zinner, Chase was accomplished but unknown, while he had backgrounds in classical and jazz, he played down technical skill, he wasn’t there to over-elaborate. Things happened fast. The group dropped two EPs, but it was a crushing mix of press hype and seismic stage presence which catapulted them forth. While other groups may have stumbled, inexperience was what made the band.
Karen was new to music, Nick had never strayed too far from the underground’s embrace and Chase was fresh from out of town. They never learnt the rules, and nor did they have time to, their push toward popularity was swift. They ran with it, pairing with TV on the Radio’s David Sitek they holed up within Brooklyn’s Headgear studios to record their debut. Here they channelled rock’s newly liberated energies to their own diversion.
The hurt in Karen’s voice speaks past the intellectual, It hits through on a more deeply emotional charge.
Fever to Tell arrived, like the band themselves, an audacious mess. Art-punk was a word thrown around the record but running on carnal impulse they pushed their sound to a grander scale. Fever spoke past New York, punk and indie rock. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs had just as many fans flicking through the pages Vogue as the rock, punk, and metal mags. A frenzied energy hangs from every aspect of the record. Fever To Tell packs thrills but also aching pains. A primal blare of rock crashing against new wave sensibilities and thrashing metal licks. Karen throws out low-slung growls, shrill high notes and everything in-between as she spirals off into her inevitably repeated phrases.
Rich opens, It’s laden with menace and from there on out things only get better … both courageous and kamikaze.
The frenzied holler of Man courses on distorted blues licks, raunchy bumps and gender-inverted bravado. It whips up a sonic concoction that could just as easily feel on The White Stripes’ Elephant. Karen howls while Chase and Zinner crash around her. Date With The Night struts forth, a conquering and straight ahead proposition. But for many, if not most, Fever builds itself around a single track. The song that made the album. Like it needs an introduction, Maps.
Fever dropped warm in March 2003, but the late release of Maps as a single and MTV music video in early 2014 was what pushed it over the top. It’s confessional lyrics and spacious riffs became a touchstone of the early 2000s. Maps pulls reality and heartache out of Karen’s head and into your own. Penned while separated from then-partner Angus Andrew of Liars, it’s a tour ballad, an old cliché sure, but in Karen’s view was that writing from a space so close to the heart, especially in contrast to the cool detachment of her contemporaries, was daringly punk.
Love is more than just the giddy high, it’s a pain, chaos and crippling anxiety.
Ferocity and romance colour her stream of consciousness … she pours her thoughts, yet it’s something more than diarised longing. The hurt in Karen’s voice speaks past the intellectual, It hits through on a more deeply emotional charge. An emotion which echoes inside the listener’s head well after the music’s stopped playing. Love is more than just the giddy high, it’s a pain, chaos and crippling anxiety. All the while Chase and Zinner play with understated authority.
But while this emotional devastation lingers, there’s no pause to ponder. Y Control follows on razor sharp and poisoned with unconventional elements. They’re back to the thumpingly anthemic noise and melody mingle together in washes of orchestrated chaos before Modern Romance disintegrates the album entirely. The group’s show-stealing antics continued long after their debut came off the stylus, yet things were never quite the same. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs never diminished, but ever so slowly they mellowed.
Fever To Tell still packs that self-same angst, violence, and kinetic charm. A surrender to powers and impulse beyond control.
As fame and record sales continued to grow they grew restless with a self-imposed credo of ‘no repeats’ there was never a formula for winning success. Internal tensions ebbed and roiled. As the wild woman of rock, Karen’s wakeup call came with a near-fatal fall from an Australia stage at the Sydney leg of Livid. She also put distance between herself and the band. O relocated to LA drifting into a world of celebrity before becoming a mother, Chase and Zinner stayed in Brooklyn enmeshed within a growing web of musical projects.
When you’re caught in the moment there’s no time to spare a thought for prolonging it, the minute you pause it’s over. For those too busy living it, Fever is a document of those heady and decadent times. For those who didn’t, it’s the myth.
Fever To Tell still packs that self-same angst, violence, and kinetic charm. A surrender to powers and impulse beyond control. A sliver of the group’s momentary thrill. Snap-frozen in time, held on high forevermore.
