Yeah Yeah Yeahs And Their 'No Rules' Rock

Yeah Yeah Yeahs are from New York City. They are a drummer (Brian Chase), a guitarist (Nick Zinner), and a singer (Karen O). Their music is raw and ragged, and undeviating in its simplicity. With only two instruments, the combo tend to find themselves able to work only extremes, milking the shifts from quiet to loud like some sexed-up Slint, with such sustenance and style that they give this rock-is-the-new-rock revival a good name. Karen O, as charismatic frontman, is most symbolic of this, her voice switching from girl-with-the-curl coo to pseudo-death-metal growl to match the appropriate intensity and volume being peddled by the band.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs released their debut self-titled five-track EP themselves in 2001 (it was re-released earlier this year by Touch & Go). The reaction it elicited totally overwhelmed the band, swept suddenly from anonymity and anointed as next-big-things across all kinds of influential style rags, as media and record labels both scrambled to find more acts to fit the brief of fitting into the rock-is-the-new-rock revival. Inundated with offers, the band showed the cut of their cloth when they ignored all the major-label overtures to sign with Chicago's staunchly independent Touch & Go records. The label has just released the band's follow-up three-track EP, Machine, in the U.S.

Still, the lack of corporate dollars has not yet dented the band's ever-growing popularity. Playing rock 'n' roll in New York City in this current climate is akin to playing rock 'n' roll in Seattle in 1991, and that means everyone from Black Dice to Out Hud to The Rapture is getting the kind of attention that even a year ago — when that first Yeah Yeah Yeahs EP came out — would've seemed ludicrous.

So, the question begs to be asked: Do Yeah Yeah Yeahs feel fortunate that they've come along at a time in which so much attention is being paid to rock, or do they, conversely, wish they'd come along at a time when there wasn't so much hype? "I actually go back and forth on this," Zinner offered during a phone interview, on the eve of the band's first Australian tour. "Just because I know that, like, three years ago, the general audience and media really weren't very appreciative of rock music in general. So, in that respect, we've been really lucky to get a lot of attention, be it good or bad. They have the opportunity to listen to our music, and choose to like it or not like it. Which is really a wonderful thing, and it's really specific to this time.

"But, then, on the other side, the bad aspect of that is that it's being phrased or presented in such a way that what we're doing is being hyper-examined under this preposterous microscope of sensation and salvation, and that's just wrong. I mean, it's rock music!"

The band's live shows have come under much scrutiny in this current climate. For a Jon Spencer Blues Explosion tour of the U.S., the flip-flop opening acts were Yeah Yeah Yeahs and fellow New Yorkers Liars, finding a platform from which they can be easily observed. Liars, whose highly-strung neo-new-wave is stylistically dissimilar to YYY's almost bluesy rock music, are the only band in the whole new-rock New York scene that Yeah Yeah Yeahs actually feel connected to, Zinner says, as they're drawn closer together by the shared touring and the fact that "our singers are now dating."

In some cities, the combination of Liars and Yeah Yeah Yeahs on the same bill has meant that the audience is high on anticipation, filled with a whole bunch of people who've heard the hype, but haven't heard the bands' music. "Which is no fun for either party," Zinner deadpans, happy to treat such shows with a laugh, aware that six months later someone else is probably gonna be the next-big-thing, and that the microscope will soon be placed elsewhere.

Most of the scrutiny and attention and glossy-mag photo-spreads with Yeah Yeah Yeahs have focused on Karen O, who augments her powerful PJ Harvey-like voice with the kind of on-stage shenanigans made cool again by uber-German performance-art noise-pop girls Cobra Killer: crowd-surfing, showering in alcohol, sexual innuendo, etc. Of course, it comes as little surprise that O, and the rest of the band, are soft-spoken off of the stage. Zinner, while possessed of a fine sense of humor, is fairly quiet, almost nervous in interview mode; even on stage, he's happy to slip behind the blustering stage presence the singer cultivates. Which, he informs, is a deliberatedly designed performance concept.

"When we started out, Karen and I were very specific about what we wanted to do," the guitarist recalled. "The first time we got together, it was just us and a drum machine and a four-track recorder. We knew that we wanted to play in a rock band, and we wanted to be incredibly direct, and really kind of sleazy and sexy and emboldened. We were definitely thinking of, like, the aesthetic of The Cramps, even though, like, neither of us owned more than one Cramps record at the time. Just like that, like, really straight-ahead, grimy rock 'n' roll thing.

"Karen and I had been working on this other project, which was mostly her songs," he continued. "It was sort of the opposite of what we wanted to do with Yeah Yeah Yeahs. It was very sort of, like, sad and poetic singer/songwriter stuff. It's really beautiful stuff, but I think we'd sort of, like, reached a limit with that, and I was getting tired of the art-rock band that I was playing in, where everything was just, uh, over-thought, and every idea was dissected down to its essence, taking out all emotion and spontaneity from it. We wanted to do something that was more, like, direct."

Zinner and Chase, as the musical duo, draw on a wide range of musical experiences to make their skeletal instrumentation sound as sophisticated and immense as it does direct and vicious. Along with a history in art-rock and post-punk-styled combos heavily under the influence of the likes of Mars, Gang of Four, DNA, Sonic Youth, Neu!, and Can, the duo have spent time in ensembles ranging from modern classical to avant-garde to Gamelan orchestras.

For such flexible musicians, therefore, it's no surprise that they're more than happy with working with only one other musician, trying as best they can to make as much noise as is possible with just two humans. "It's incredibly liberating, especially creatively," Zinner enthused about their simple set-up. "There's no rules, and, at the same time, the only limit is what we're physically capable of, which makes things really exciting. There's so much that's unexplored, that it makes us feel hopeful for the future."

The band's future, Zinner reckons, is unlikely to last any more than five years. "We've always said, from the very beginning, that we'll know when this band should end," he said. "It'll be obvious to us, because the songs will stop coming, the inspiration won't be there. We've definitely felt that Yeah Yeah Yeahs is, like, a short-term thing, and that we're just trying to make great music for as long as this, like, great thing that we have lasts." — Anthony Carew [Thursday, Dec. 5, 2002]