YEAH
YEAH YEAHS
Fever to
tell
CD/LP,
Polydor
“Fever to tell” smells heavily of a time when it was a normal step
for Punkbands to sign with a major label because, virtually, there were only
major labels around. Bigger ones and smaller ones, less syndicated and
conglomerated than nowadays but all of them working the way majors used to
work back then (which is not too different from today except that
drug-habits were encouraged among execs as well as musicians, everyone had a
field day because profit margins were high up and “internet” was a word
used in a novel by William Gibson and not a terminal threat to the company.)
Nowadays is different, still a lot of punkbands sign with major labels,
especially if they are sharply hyped and new shooters from New York.
Usually careers of such bands forms an arch, with the first album the
highest point. I will only name a few bands of the last year: Black
Rebel Motorcycle Club, The
Strokes, Disturbed or The Cooper Temple Clause come to my mind at
an instant, though there are dozens like them every month. Now it is the
Yeah Yeah Yeahs, which is a pity, because I loved the feverish, highly
distorted mix of proto-punk and new wave, run through an apocalyptic
childhood in the late Eighties and early Nineties, that seeped through their
first EP and 7”-single (both on Wijita). The smell of (sexual)
deviancy, perverted philosophies of life and a complete disregard for their
own and others corporal well-being included, was magnetic to me. I was
hoping for Pussy Galore (and as I thought, there are all three members of
the Jon Spence Blues Explosion named personally in the thanks-list) , but
somehow knowing I’d end up with Daisy Chainsaw or the Action Swingers.
This is my prognosis: we’ll get another album from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs,
which will be quite good, but a let-down to this one and then we’ll here
no more of the band, because the band will split up to pursue various
careers in the music industry (producers, session musician, accountant) or
in advertisement (creative director) or get a decent job instead. It is a
pity and I’d love to see it otherwise, but I am afraid it will happen this
way. Mark my words.
Back to the music. In comparison to the first throes of artistic lust and
explosion, as contained in the EP and single, “fever to tell” is almost
toned-down and harmonic. Of course, it really isn’t. The guitar-riffs are
almost square, banging off the walls, intercommunicating with the drums
while the voice goes all the way to Squaresville and back. Karen O, the
singer, screams, wails, drools, does a perfect imitation of New
York-glamour-queen, goes back to crack-addict-Lolita only to start singing
the next moment. If you are a little older than me, you might remember Wendy
O’Matic, Siouxsie and the Banshees or Bow Wow Wow or any other
female-fronted punkband of the late New Wave / Punk-movement in the Big
Apple. It is the interplay of incoherent guitar-music with its complete
negligence of common ways to play and sound, and the constantly changing
vocalism of the singer, spouting off one citeable phrase after the other.
For instance the lascivious “ride daddy ride” during “Cold Light” or
“I am rich” during “Rich”. The album is full of these great moments.
P.S.: The hidden track opens up new directions for the band, more introverted, art-oriented with a stronger connection to the basic blues-background of New York city punk. Maybe that is a straw to save the band from the awful picture I have painted for them above.
