Music

Yeah Yeah Yeahs have never been popular with indie purists. Isn’t

there a whiff of contrivance about frontwoman Karen O’s carefully

cultivated NYC boho chic? Then there’s her Happy Shopper-Lydia Lunch performance art theatricality. And what about the rumours of her having

dumped Liars singer Angus Andrew as soon as über-cool film director

Spike Jonze appeared on her social radar? These are signifiers of

exactly the kind of ‘inauthenticity’ that’s guaranteed to make an indie

snob’s blood boil.

But what must be most infuriating for the

sceptics is that these doubts and suspicions are all but impossible to

justify when actually faced with the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s music. Their 2003

debut ‘Fever To Tell’ was a riot of smart and snappy NYC punk-pop. This

long-awaited follow-up is arguably better still, confirming Nick

Zinner, Brian Chase and new recruit Imaad Wasif’s ability to balance

accessibility with intensity and revealing Zinner to be a guitarist of

genuine verve and invention.

It also suggests that they’re

unlikely to have to rely on notional indie cred for very much longer.

In fact, they’re probably the kind of band who make most sense as a

mainstream pop concern. In the context of, say, ‘Top Of The Pops’,

Karen O should be able to maintain an air of exotic and faintly edgy

unpredictability which would quickly wither in cultish obscurity.

‘Cheated Hearts’ – which is surely this album’s heartbroken flipside to

the gorgeous, lovelorn ‘Maps’ from 2003’s ‘Fever To Tell’ – requires a

grand stage for its melodrama. The likes of ‘Mysteries’ and ‘Way Out’

will thrive on having a bland counterpoint for their abrasive

raggedness. And Karen needs to keep pushing and reinventing herself to

move forward. The dusty, resolute defiance of ‘Warrior’ and ‘Turn Into’

suggest a continuing journey rather than an arrival. ‘Men, they like me

’cos I’m a warrior,’ she deadpans. It often seems like Karen O is

pretty good at making enemies. But after all, warriors need someone to

fight.