Released in anticipation of the live DVD (‘Tell Me What Rockers To Swallow’) on 25th October, ‘Y Control’ is lifted from last year’s debut ‘Fever To Tell’.
Marketing ploy aside, this is a chance to step back and revisit one of the multitude of 2003’s hotly tipped and/or tracked NY bands that were dropping in at a rate of one every five minutes: tut, I don‘t know, you wait 2 years for a new American band and then about half a million all come along at once.
While ‘Y Control’ retains everything that is quintessentially the Yeah Yeah Yeahs: warped guitar noises, busy but decisive drumming and Karen O’s anxiously tremulous but seductively edgy vocals, it’s a more restrained affair than ‘Date With The Night’ but not as epically controlled as ‘Maps’. The driving bass is like a slightly speeded up version of The Cure’s ‘Night Like This’ - one of their greatest songs ever – and so, as much by association, I find it all rather lovely. My only nagging concern is that the release of ‘Y Control’ 18 months after the album is an indication that the band are struggling to follow it up with new material.
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Setting that aside, ‘Y Control’ suggests that the Yeah Yeah Yeahs have a sound that can be worked even further within the pared down confines of Brian Chase’s drum and Nick Zinner’s guitar. More encouraging is the re-acknowledgement that Karen O’s voice is an instrument that can be dropped over pretty much anything Nick Zinner cares to eviscerate from his weapon of choice.
On that basis alone the Yeah Yeah Yeahs should be able to sustain interest into 2005 as others on the US wave fall back into the surf.
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