Must see: Yeah Yeah Yeahs
OUTRAGEOUS stage threads used to be a common feature of a musician’s persona: think Elvis, Bowie, Grace Jones, Elton John, KISS, Rick Wakeman...
Take out today’s pop divas, though, and there are few people who go to the effort of dolling themselves up like it’s 1975.
Except one: Yeah Yeah Yeahs frontwoman Karen O, whose couture stylings are the perfect complement to her art-rock sounds. Three albums and several international tours in, audiences are getting used to O’s outlandish fashion sense.
The last time the band was in Manchester, touring their current album It’s Blitz! in April, O arrived on stage in a glowing balaclava that pulsated a vibrant pink every time the music peaked.
Unafraid to evolve
She and her band, completed by guitarist Nick Zinner and drummer Brian Chase, come back on Sunday and already there’s much web chatter about what costume she’ll kick off the show with.
It takes a brave band, though, to let their frontwoman’s wardrobe steal so much of the limelight. But then Yeah Yeah Yeahs are pretty brave; their sound, though accutely in tune with the times, is utterly out on a limb – snarling, brimming with madness, but imbued with killer, dancefloor-ready rhythms.
And they’re also a band unafraid to evolve, largely because their writing credits sit mainly on one man’s shoulders – Zinner’s, the group’s Gothic elf, creative tour de force and guitar hero.
His swampy garage guitar on their debut Fever To Tell grew into a stutting self assurance on the follow-up Show Your Bones (in great contrast to the mood of the band, who nearly broke up while recording the album), and more recently gave way to synth-soaked melodies on It’s Blitz!.
The great surprise, though, is how neatly those sounds tie together live. In April, the on-stage meeting of Dull Life, Gold Lion and Miles Away – tracks from right across their back catalogue – was a rare treat, but it also proved that no matter what they do to their music, Yeah Yeah Yeahs always end up sounding just like themselves.
And here at CityLife, uniqueness is a quality we definitely admire.
December 6, 2009. Apollo, SOLD OUT.
Published: Fri, 04 December, 2009
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