Yeah Yeah Yeahs

The rare case where a new garage band's media hype actually matches the quality and excitement of the finished recording. Sexy and serpentine singer Karen O exudes more raspy cool than a young Mick Jagger, and the band's trashy art school rock is prone to tantric explosions of cathartic bliss.

Karen O is one excitable girl. She's the lead singer of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the
guitar-drums-gal band whose debut full-length album, Fever to Tell, proves that the New
York rock renaissance runs deeper and wilder than the Strokes. Show O a hottie, or just
set her up with the tensile riffs that Nick Zinner on guitar and Brian Chase on drums sock
out in unison, and she'll whoop and shriek and wail and pant in paroxysms of tru... More >

With help from that bad corporate money, they get a striking sound out of the no-bass thing. It's both big and punk, never a natural combo, and up against the Kills it's killer--Nick Zinner commands more than any man's allotted portion of dangerous riffs. But to care about this band you have to find Karen O's f*ck-me persona provocative if not seductive, and since I've never been one for the sex-is-combat thing, I find it silly or obnoxious depending on who's taking it seriously. Duly noted: two human-scale songs toward the end. (Grade - B+)