Emerging with their first full album in 2003, The Yeah Yeah
Yeahs’ existed in the New York punk scene and so called
post ‘No Wave’ scene in the late nineties, as grunge
was cleaning the mud off, and the doco ‘Kill Your
Idols,’ directed by Scott Crary came out a year later which
featured them and their mentors. Named after the band of the same
name, and the phrase by legends Sonic Youth, the underground
music scene quickly noticed a sexy young rocker and her band
called The Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ in the film, and now, six years
later, Karen O. and her boys are still making music hot
again.
Named by Subnormal Magazine as one of the best rock bands of the
decade, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs are back and hotter than ever with
It's Blitz! The band's third album proper, out now and tearing up
the streets. Of the band, Subnormal Magazine, which broke out
with one of the first interviews with Jewel after predicting to
her she would be a star, states, ‘There are few new bands
we get excited about, because really, so much new music is just
trash, and will never be as good as those before them. Garbage
was one of the few, and then Kill Hannah. There are a small
handful of others. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs’, thanks to Karen O.
and the bands brilliance, have picked up that same power and
genius Garbage had in the 90’s, and PJ Harvey still has.
They have made music exciting again.
Sexy singer Karen O tells us, ‘I just love the feeling of
getting on stage and the audience screaming for us to play our
songs.’ And scream they do, for good reason.
Merging the wild craziness of PJ Harvey, the fetish fashion punk
sensibility of Deborah Harry (Blondie) and Chrissie Hynde (The
Pretenders), the raw power of her influences of Iggy and The
Stooges, and the artistry of The Velvet Underground and Sonic
Youth, Karen O. and The Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ incendiary live
shows are the stuff of legend.
Nick Zinner,Brian Chase, and Karen O. mean business as they strut
both punk rock disco explosions and brave ballads that cut both
sides of the chain, straight to the heart, and make you
wanna’ dance dance dance before its all over.
© 2009, The Hollywood Sentinel / Subnormal Magazine,
2009