Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Oct. 2, Zilker Park
Karen O’s come a long way since pouring beers on herself in a ripped prom dress and blacking out onstage. She’s harnessed her frontwoman powers for good, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs have proven themselves arena-ready. Friday night, she walked onstage in a hood, then removed it to reveal a fringed, multihued Logan’s Run getup, which propelled the 1980s mood of the NYC trio’s set. For It’s Blitz! single “Zero,” she put on a leather jacket to match the video and shoulder-strut around the stage. “Runaway” skipped through dance-punk with fevered pitch, and O’s squatting, side-stepping, and holding the microphone with her mouth to emit a sort of dinosaur noise were the perfect visual counterpart to drummer Brian Chase and guitarist Nick Zinner’s well-mannered aggression and restraint. While most of the songs came from It’s Blitz!, “Gold Lion,” from 2006’s Show Your Bones, and Fever to Tell tearjerker “Maps” made for a nice mixed bag. The YYYs live is now more performance than spectacle, and Karen O is someone young girls are putting on fingerless gloves and singing into hairbrushes trying to emulate. Well done.
This article appears in October 9 • 2009.