Whether you enjoy Yeah Yeah Yeahs – or The Karen O Experience, as it surely is – is utterly dependant upon whether you’re the kind of person who indulges the obnoxious or not. Because most of Karen O’s kinetic performance is reminiscent of children attempting to impress their parents’ friends at dinner parties, staying up past bedtime with cack-handed gymnastics and half-remembered pop renditions, clad in garish dressing-up outfits. (Appropriately, Mom and Pop O are here, watching the show.)
Her stage attire has passed out of the realm of the imitable – let’s see the wannabes try and emulate tonight’s talent show-Ziggy Stardust skating-skirt ensemble, replete with silver P.E. knickers – just as replica prom dresses become ubiquitous on the high street. Remember the video for New Order’s “True Faith”, with the bouncing men? Karen’s stylist surely does, as her encore garb is a silver boilersuit with swimming cap and bulbous hip and knee details. It could not be less flattering, from which – going by the innumerable self-cut mullets on display this evening – you can safely assume that it’s exceptionally hip. Whatever – the coolest-looking person here is the Sloane in white wellies and pashmina who seems to be the only person who hasn’t dressed for peer group approval.
Aside from the spectacle, the sound mix is dire. Brian’s drums and Nick’s guitar (look, no bass!) drown out lyrical specifics, so the singing oscillates between indecipherable staccato sassiness and primally screamed thrash interludes. Which, when it obscures the hateful refrain of “Black Tongue” – “Boy, you’re just a stupid bitch/And girl you’re just a no-good dick” – is no bad thing. When it intrudes upon “Maps”, however, it’s a different matter.
The heart of the “Fever To Tell” album and the soul of the show, it’s the nuclear weapon in their armoury of slingshots, their “Angels” in waiting. “Maps”, with its yearning, hypnotic, Chrissie Hynde-alike chorus of “Wait/They don’t love you like I love you” offers a glimpse at career longevity, after the hipsters have moved onto another kerazy NYC import and the performance art antics become tiresome (or, worse, Karen gets fat – imagine the horror!). It’s the only point in when the stage becomes almost static, when Karen is the centre of attention for all the right reasons, when you sense human beings behind the posturing. It’s a brief interlude, but a powerful one, and it gets the biggest applause of the evening.
If Yeah Yeah Yeahs are still around in another couple of years it will be everything to do with moments like this, and very little to do with pantomime chic.
