Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Yeah Yeah Yeahs EP
Shifty / Touch And Go
Hang on to your hips, kiddies, because the Yeah Yeah Yeahs are about to blow up in your face like a warm can of beer plucked off the truckbed. The trio churns and flurries through an all-too-brief five songs that seem to be as unstoppable as a gravel truck with cut brake lines. Vocalist Karen O has more than a bit of deep soul bellow, not unlike Lisa Kekaula (The Bellrays, The Now Time Delegation)… that is, if Lisa were about to scratch your eyes out. A lesser band could ride the gravy train based on that yowl alone, but in this case, drums (Brian Chase) and guitars (Nick Zinner) more than keep up with a razor-sharp sense of melody to go along with the jagged and often punky music. “Art Star” starts like a sparse B-52’s tune, but then flip flops between Napalm Death-like blasts of screaming and an angular vocal bit that reminds me of Suzanne Vega’s”‘Tom’s Diner.” The opening “Bang” has a superfunk riff to counterpoint Karen O’s vitriol – “you ain’t no baby no more… Baby.” Ouch. Following that is “Mystery Girl,” which has one of those drop-dead-cool bassline-and-rumbling-drums things going, and when you add Karen O’s quaver (“the girl had a heart like a barracuda baby, she floated on the air like a crested wave”), it just makes me want to roll down my car window and scream: Fuck…Yeah…Yeah…Yeah.
Touch And Go: http://www.southern.com/southern/label/TCH/ • The Yeah Yeah Yeahs: http://www.yeahyeahyeahs.com
