Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Fever to Tell
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Music CD Cover
Artist: Yeah Yeah YeahsEdition: Music CD
Format: Explicit Lyrics
CD Release Date: 2003-04-29
Music Label: Interscope Records
Soundtracks:
- Rich
- Date with the Night
- Man
- Tick
- Black Tongue
- Pin
- Cold Light
- No No No
- Maps
- Y Control
- Modern Romance
Free Music Notes for Fever to Tell
Free Music Review: Transgress All Limits
Hit: 5 Stars
4.75 stars--not perfect, but almost
Well, YYY's new album _Show Your Bones_ will be out before you know it, so let's revisit from whence this band has come. When _Fever to Tell_ came out three years back, there was a considerable hype to back them up. For once in punk rock, it was justified. While _Fever to Tell_ does not quite have the distilled intensity of their self-titled EP, it comes close, throwing in a relatively smooth ballad, _Maps_, to really complicate our understanding of what this band is about.
From what I can tell, they are all about transgressing limits. I am eager to see where they take this ethic on _Show Your Bones_, because few bands have been as good at this in the new millennium, punk or otherwise. The French call the orgasmic feeling that comes from going past boundaries jouissance. Another term they have for orgasm is _le petit mort_, or the little death. Karen O liberally scatters these little deaths all over every record they have made to date. Nick Zinner and Brian Chase, on guitar and drums, respectively, have the perfect approach to backing this up, always straddling the line between fine musicianship and reckless abandon. To see this in the flesh at a live show comes highly recommended. They are perhaps the most exciting "punk" band I have ever seen. Karen O looks like she is going to explode into a supernova at any moment while Nick Zinner cuts a Nick Cave-like profile as he handles all the musical notes the band makes with admirable aplomb.
"Cold Light," for example: "We can do it to each other/ Just like a sister and a brother." Ooohhh. She transgresses the incest taboo. Unlike what some may think, there is more to what she is doing than mere shock value. Like the best art, they transgress limits to make us question our values, in this case the bases upon which we form our love relationships. I'm pretty sure Karen O is not advocating incest, just shaking our cages for the next time we choose to "do it to each other," both sexually and with psychic violence. This is really a philosophical band (that rocks you out of your mind, infinitizes you, Emmanuel Levinas would say).
Next, "No No No": lets concentrate on the music here. Jack White doesn't have anything on Nick Zinner as far as being a one-man guitar armada goes. He handles the low-end and the high-end all at once in many songs. This one starts out slow, a prohibition against a girlfriend who is about to go and do something that she will regret. The music is subdued. Then the guitar and drums get almost sloppy with fuzz, feedback, and flailing. This is an old, old punk technique, but one that YYY's excel at. The musicians' transgression of technique make us feel that the subject of Karen's prohibitions is about to spin herself into danger if she doesn't heed her "no." All we can say is "yes."
"Maps": The transgression here might be harder to spot than in other songs. It's the most conventional thing the YYY's have ever done. "Wait, they don't love you like I love you." Here they are crossing the line in the sand that punkers of the generations before have drawn: NO SONGS ABOUT GENUINE LOVE. Well, Karen O has a fever to tell and since it has to do with her experience of love, in large part, why would she not witness? Punk's near-demise in the last decade or so has a lot to do with relying on the old formulae that the Sex Pistols "set up" for us. Punk's only chance of surviving is constantly transgressing its own aesthetic. YYY's have this down pat.
"Y Control" might be the most exciting song on this album. When I saw this one live, Nick Zinner had all his pedals going at once looking like a goth dervish as he hopped between positions to Karen's _ecriture feminine_ dervish. Again, this raises a major philosophical question: Why should we try to control anything, music or otherwise? Going by the intense polarization that the YYY's cause, it is clear that many people prefer their music controlled, dwelling neatly in totalized little boxes, even in a so-called transgressive form such as punk. Well, if that is what "punk" is, the YYY's tell us, you can have it. No limits. No prescriptions. No taboos. All jouissance, right in the same vein of other rockers who have lasted because they dared to defy: Patti Smith, VDGG, the Clash, the Pistols, Nirvana, P.J. Harvey, and so on in a list of illustriously self-destructive names. The clincher is that this is more than just mindless nihilism: it is transgression that makes a theoretical difference, a change in the way we see and feel things. Few artists have done this in any manner that approaches _Fever to Tell_ since its release. If the YYY's cross new borders with the same cavalier mania on _Show Your Bones_, they will certainly cement their place amongst the rock artists who are truly unforgettable while also showing the ablitity to exhibit enduring genius.
Fever to Tell Poster
The UK edition of the New York trio and U.K. critical fave's debut album includes a track not found on the U.S. version, "Yeah! New York", plus this disc includes enhanced material, including the video of "Date With The Night".Well before the release of this solid but slender debut, the Brooklyn-based Yeah Yeah Yeahs were the subject of so much international press hype that the White Stripes were probably taking quick, nervous peeks over their shoulders. But while Fever to Tell captures a lot of what?s good about the trio--mostly the caterwauling energy of their club shows--it also exposes the band?s limitations. Singer Karen O is the undeniable star here, contorting her voice from a primal P.J. Harvey growl to the pre-orgasmic purr of Chrissie Hynde. Nick Zinner chops, slashes, and torpedoes his guitar around, across, and straight at O?s voice, while drummer Brian Chase delivers a suitably raw trash-can thump. There are a lot of cool sounds on this 11-song, 37-minuute disc, and enough metallic-KO attitude to make a bare-chested grandpa like Iggy Pop proud. What?s missing is a more varied set of fully fleshed-out songs, the kind it took the White Stripes four albums to write. Hype too early in a career can be terrible burden--ask Liz Phair or, soon enough, the Vines. Better to enjoy Fever to Tell for what it is--an uninhibited blast of garage-rock fury--without swallowing extravagant claims for a potentially great band still under construction. --Keith Moerer
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