Alright.
After The Locust (whose set I will paraphrase as “WGGAAAHHKKK! That was a song. No, really.”) left the stage, me and my friends were standing out in the main area of the club waiting for the set to start. Karen O (dressed rather plainly and much shorter than I imagined) walks up next to us and begins having a conversation with someone. We argue quietly over whether or not it’s her. I argue that it’s not her (probably within her earshot if she cared to hear). Then she brushes past us and through the “BANDS ONLY” door. My friends glare at me.
After a soundcheck, the band takes the stage, Karen wearing combat boots, fishnets, a bizzare pink 80’s dress with a SHRIMP pattern and a giant belt, stockings on her arms, and what appears to be a spiked white golf glove with the fingers cut off. Her makeup is sublimely fucked up, and it looks like she has two black eyes. The crowd goes crazy. They start their set. 2 notes right off the bat:
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Karen O has one of the most charismatic stage presences I’ve ever seen. She has Chan Marshall’s endearing insanity, Courtney Love’s junkie sexuality and whole lot that’s all Karen. She had the crowd eating out of her strangely gloved hands the entire show.
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Their live sound (at least last night) is a WHOLE LOT punkier than their albums. The guitars weren’t nearly so clean and tight, and a lot louder. Karen’s vocals were turned down in the mix a little bit, and her delivery was very different than the glossy, affected style she uses in the studio. She was a raging, screaming beast of a punked out bitch, and it was awesome.
The much harder sound meant that certain familiar tracks became pounding, roaring, fist-pumping garage anthems, for example:
Cold Light
Y Control
Black Tongue
And an astonishingly hard version of Mystery Girl
The real genius of the show came through in the parade of 2-minute slamdance symphonies that had shed their glitter to reveal enough scorching punk power to rival a nuclear explosion. Karen O rose to the occasion, spewing beer on to the crowd, lifting her skirt to flash us, writhing on the stage, pogoing up and down holding the ball of the microphone in her mouth while shredding her vocal cords with screams, and whole lot more. She worked the crowd in to an absolute frenzy. The show stealers were:
Art Star (Karen on her back on the stage, screaming and shaking as the pit goes absolutely insane. Hell yes)
Tick
Pin (Frantic pogoing and fists in the air with the chorus)
No No No
Date With The Night (they really brought out the harder aspects of this song)
They also got in a few songs that didn’t sound very different from the recorded versions, and there’s no problem with that. The show concluded with Modern Romance, which Karen actually finished off stage, which was a pretty awesome exit strategy. And of course, Maps doesn’t really lend itself to a hard version.
Overall, an astonishingly powerful show. Significantly more impressive than the albums, as I said, and I honestly can’t understand why they would have chosen to clean the sound up so much for the studio. My favorite Karen move of the night was when she was strutting past the drumset during a song, and she reached over and hit a cymbal with the microphone in time with the song. It didn’t look planned, either. At one point she was also on her knees rubbing a stuffed animal with its head bitten off between her breasts, her eye makeup running down her face from the sweltering heat and emphasizing her facial contortions. It was awesome. That woman is a performer, man.
Last night felt like something special. It’s always great to see a band during their moment, you know? The crowd was amazing, the band was ON, and we fed off of each other just right. Even Karen seemed surprised by the enthusiasm of the crowd at times. This is why Austin kicks so much ass. As far as I’m concerned, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs do too. Go see them if you have the chance.
LC