(Touch and Go)
\You ain't a baby no more/ Baby"" is the first line howled out of Karen O, the magnum-powered Joan of Arc frontwoman of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Rereleased on the Touch and Go label, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs self-titled debut EP tears out five songs with no bass in less than 15 minutes at sacrilegiously low sound quality while the listener wonders how it can be so good.
The answer to that is simple; Trios that write songs about not taking sex seriously, satirizing art, feeling lost and being hated while sounding like the Cramps fronted by Exene circa age 17 are on fire. Particularly these days any piece of indie/punk that gives more than a nod to its predecessors is the new goldmine being plundered until it inevitably becomes pass??.
Well, luckily, this is not yet there: it's raw, mean, fresh meat. Nick Zinner's garage-trash guitar acts as both a catalyst at times and a sedative to Karen O's snarl. Brian Chase drums with steady punk operation, yet maintains an excellent sense of syncopation. This syncopation is most apparent on the powder keg opening track, ""Bang,"" in which Karen O makes a ridiculously addictive chorus out of the line ""As a f--k son you sucked.""
Their follow-up EP Machine is not quite as impressive as the debut, however it does showcase three more tracks from the band. The first cut, ""Machine,"" moves along with some really wrenching vocals at a frenzied pace, while the second, ""Graveyard,"" is a stop time tempo shifting rant.
Overall, Machine doesn't have quite the songwriting that the debut did, and it sounds like it was rushed, but then again this band seems to be all about that. With a debut LP already recorded, watch out for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs to become the band that the idiot hipster friend thumbs his/her respective nose at you for not knowing about.
