YEAH YEAH YEAHS

same

12”/CD, Wichita

I just love to get ahold of the first EP of a young, energetic band. Their first recordings, usually they have the most energy and the uninhibited, uncompromising representation of not yet corrupted minds and artistic visions. Listen to “Miles Away” to know what I am talking about here. It will be bad to see the Yeah Yeah Yeahs go the way to stardom and lose all their rawness and edges on the way (they will have to, if they want to go that way) but at least I will still have this record and then I can say a) I knew them back then and b) they were a lot better then, they are just rock stars now.

Awwwwlright! Finally a young band that kicks the shit out of distorted, downtuned guitars, drums and vocals in that impeccable juvenile style that was once all the rage in New Yahk citay! Sure, Pussy Galore started it all off and quite correctly the Yeah Yeah Yeahs open up for the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion on their current European tour, but what the hell, these five songs on their debut album kick some serious butt. Without being obnoxious, loud and drunken. Okay, they are loud, but not in that snotty punkrock-sense, but rather because this is rock music, the way it is played in dark, below-earth-level-clubs and rehearsal-garages all around the western hemisphere, but doesn’t get out into the open anymore. And this sort of music is supposed to be played loud.

Somehow these five tracks take back some 15 years and across the globe, to a time when New York City way ruled by guitar-playing heroin-junkies with long hair and leather clothing. At that time a young new layer of uncompromising musicians took up the roots of blues, combined them with punk and produced an arrogant, noisy kind of blues-rock that has now become legendary and forgotten. They somehow managed to dissolve up into the big and mighty art-circuit in New York and that gave them stamina and strength to make it “Big”. In a sense. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs have just that sort of arrogant energy and distorted artsyness. I love that. Take for example a track like “Art Star”, where they have a silly “do-do-do” refrain and hack into serious noise-cacophonies in between, while the singer rambles on about some thing or other. Or take a look at their fotos on the back cover. Who’d take videostills, where they look really deranged and somewhat out of their minds (backstage after a show or already back at the hotel?) to represent themselves. I see an Asian girlfriend looking sad, a straight-looking guy from next door (maybe works with computers or so) and a Nick-Cave-look-a-like. But that is not what I hear. What I hear are three young people who just want to trash it out with style.

One more thing: Somehow I have the feeling that I have heard the song “Our time” before. Something from the Eighties. I don’t care, because this is a great track of dynamic tension, that shows maybe one thing: this has to be great life. Maybe better than on record, but record is all I have got. As you might know, I don’t go to concerts a lot anymore. There is too much stuff that annoys me with concerts, but maybe I’d go to see Jon Spencer just to hear these guys play. (Gosh, I am an arrogant prick, ain’t I?)

05/2002