Anyone struggling to 'get' the Yeah Yeah Yeahs should leave town now if 'Maps' doesn't elevate them skywards.
Galaxies away from the chaotic, spaghetti junction pile-up of debut album 'Fever To Tell', this is Karen O in lovelorn, poetic crash comedown. Normally a bomb of feline semtex - all violent passion and hot-wired sexual intensity - here the feisty, spitting fuse has been extinguished, exposing the tremulous side of the girl.
Nick Zinner's spindly guitar alarm bells and Brian Chase's exotic, thumping percussion are a mere tear-stained bed for O to writhe restlessly upon, her desperation clinging at the torn chorus of "Wait, they don't love you like I love you."
Only a fool would walk away from that kind of devotion. dotmusic suspects Karen's prey was eaten alive.
by Ben Gilbert