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MUSIC
Yeah Yeah Yeahs ★★★★
Hordern Pavilion, July 24
Of the audiences at latter-day Yeah Yeah Yeahs shows, frontwoman Karen Lee Orzolek (Karen O) told this masthead recently: “it’s beyond just appreciation; it feels like love”.
She’s not wrong. The Sydney leg of the American trio’s tour falls on a cold night and on a blue Monday, to boot. Yet all Orzolek does is whip off her white-rimmed sunglasses a few minutes in, and she is buoyed by a roar of collective adoration from a crowd that begins as it means to go on: lapping up her every move, prowl, yelp and the meowing yowl that is her speciality.
Karen O’s vocals can flip to a feathery caress: Yeah Yeah Yeahs, pictured here in Melbourne on July 20.Credit: Rick Clifford
Orzolek’s vocals can flip to a feathery caress, too, showcased by newer songs such as the sultry slow-burn of Lovebomb and Blacktop, the latter with guitar from Nick Zinner that veers wondrously close to Robert Fripp’s “Frippertronics” experiments with Brian Eno in the 1970s.
Which isn’t to say the crowd goes wild. For much of the show, the Hordern Pavilion is united in stillness, bar the front few rows of bobbing heads (who are able to fully behold Orzolek’s red, and later gold, strips of spangled tulle artfully arranged as a dress) and our obedience to the “dance now” dictate of the glitter cannon that goes off for 2009 hit Heads Will Roll.
But the stillness feels like love, too. The sound is mixed so superbly it’s more than enough to just stand and surrender to the colossal darkwave synth of Spitting off the Edge of the World, which the band plays first, bucking the set list trope of saving the popular recent single for later. No doubt because they also have Gold Lion, Zero and Maps to unleash in what ends up being a deliriously overstuffed set of crowd-pleasers.
Last year’s album Cool It Down buffed off any lingering brat factor from the band’s first two, Fever to Tell (2003) and Show Your Bones (2006). But while it is songs from those two that are most rapturously received, Yeah Yeah Yeahs are far less mired in early ’00s nostalgia than New York indie-rock contemporaries such as the Strokes or Interpol.
Less mired in early ’00s nostalgia than their contemporaries: Yeah Yeah Yeahs, pictured here in Melbourne on July 20.Credit: Rick Clifford
It’s tempting to attribute the show’s success wholly to the band; to Orzolek’s bubbly song dedications, or to Brian Chase spanking his drums during Date with the Night, or to Zinner’s so-very-NYC refusal to join his bandmates in clapping above his head, knowing that nailing the icy guitar intro to encore Y Control is a way cooler way to gee us up.
It’s all of these things, yes, but given how often the sound at a concert is not quite right, or downright wrong, the clincher for this show is worth applauding again: the mix is bloody perfect. Yes, yes and yes.
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