– Yeah Yeah Yeahs, in concert at Camden Crawl – 2009 – BBC 6 Music –
Yeah Yeah Yeahs in concert to end the week and get set for a new one. Recorded live at Camden Crawl for BBC 6 Music in 2009.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs have recorded five studio albums; the first, Fever to Tell, was released in 2003. The second, Show Your Bones, was released in 2006 and was named the second best album of the year by NME. Their third studio album, It’s Blitz!, was released in March 2009. All three albums earned the band Grammy nominations for Best Alternative Music Album. Their fourth album, Mosquito, came out in April 2013, and Cool It Down followed in September 2022.
vocalist and pianist Karen O and drummer Brian Chase first met as students at Oberlin College in Ohio in the late 1990s, where Chase was a jazz student at the conservatory. Karen then transferred to New York University and met Keyboardist Zinner, a student at Bard College, in a local bar, where they formed an “instant connection”. During this time, they also shared a loft with future members of the band Metric. Orzolek and Zinner formed an acoustic duo called Unitard but soon decided to “shake things up a bit” by forming a “trashy, punky, grimy” band modeled after the art student, avant-punk bands Karen O was exposed to at Oberlin. After the drummer they initially recruited bowed out, Chase joined the line-up.
The band wrote a slew of songs at their first rehearsal and soon wound up supporting The Strokes and The White Stripes, earning a significant buzz for their arty and garage punk scene. In late 2001, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs released their self-titled debut EP, which they recorded with Boss Hog’s Jerry Teel, on their own Shifty label. Early the next year, they stepped into the international spotlight, appearing at South by Southwest, touring the U.S. with Girls Against Boys, and Europe with Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, and headlining their own U.K. tour. Wichita Recordings distributed the group’s EP in the U.K. and Touch and Go reissued it in the States.
In 2003, the band released their debut album, Fever to Tell, which received several strong critical reviews and sold more than 750,000 copies worldwide. The album’s third single, “Maps”, received significant airplay on alternative radio. In 2010, Rolling Stone ranked “Maps” as 386th in their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. The video for their 2004 single “Y Control” was directed by Spike Jonze. In October 2004, the band released their first DVD, Tell Me What Rockers to Swallow. The DVD included a concert filmed at The Fillmore in San Francisco, all of the band’s music videos to date, and various interviews. Later the same year, they were featured in Scott Crary’s documentary Kill Your Idols.
In November 2009, NME rated Fever to Tell the No. 5 Best Album of the Decade.
The Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ style has been described as “an art-rock trio who made an edgy post-punk, dancefloor-friendly racket that mixed up Blondie, Pretenders, and Siouxsie and the Banshees”.
Press play, crank it up and find out.
