Within an hour of first seeing the music video for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs single “Maps” on MTV (on MTV, I said!), I stood up, walked to my car, and drove to a record store to buy their 2003 full-length debut, Fever to Tell. I can’t remember ever having done that before or since. On the album the trio captured the zeitgeist of supra-hyped New York City everything—when excess cool seemed particularly en vogue in rock ’n’ roll—but harnessed the energy of that white-hot scene to become something so much greater than just another local club act happily pinballing around a then-flourishing incubator. And you could really feel it onscreen. With the elastic and high-strung vocals of the charismatic Karen O and the innovative, jagged riffs of Nick Zinner, Fever to Tell still burbles with chaos in a way that rock music should. It’s often unpredictable, it occasionally flies off the rails, and it’s always fascinating. Though it converges the in-fashion dance-punk of the early 2000s with blown-out glam and dark art-rock, to this day it feels totally alive. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs went on to have success with their solid 2006 follow-up, Show Your Bones, and 2009’s It’s Blitz!, but the rawness and invention of Fever to Tell will always define them. Which is probably why they emerged from a hiatus last year to drop a deluxe remastering and vinyl reissue of the record—one that features rarities and B sides—and head out on this here little tour. v
