FEATURE:
Date with the Night
Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Fever to Tell at Twenty
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ON 29th April…
IN THIS PHOTO: Yeah Yeah Yeahs in 2003/PHOTO CREDIT: Eddie Brannan via FADER
a terrific album will turn twenty. Fever to Tell is the debut album from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Produced by David Andrew, it is undoubtably one of the most important and greatest albums of the '00s. The New York band (Karen O, Nick Zinner and Brian Chase) unleashed this masterful and timeless album in 2003. In the same way as The Strokes defined a New York sound and created this real impression of the city, I feel Yeah Yeah Yeahs do the same. The Brooklyn trio are a more vulnerable and electric. There is that blend of the open and exhilarating. If bands like The Strokes are more macho and have less depth, a fellow New York band were doing something different and embodying a new definition and sound of Indie Rock and Garage. I want to come to reviews for the mighty Fever to Tell. First, NPR wrote about the album in 2017. Sophie Kemp was writing an essay as part of NPR Music's list of 150 Greatest Albums Made By Women:
“Indie rock lore holds the New York City of the early aughts in special regard. In the midst of a subcultural interim when Brooklyn began to be gentrified and Manhattan was taking its last gasp, celebrated macho indie rock bands like The Strokes, LCD Soundsystem and Interpol rose to popularity. In New York and all throughout the eastern seaboard, indie rock coexisted with electroclash and early laptop-rock bands as artists drew inspiration from both the art rock of the past and contemporary electronic music. From that same period of stylized and innovative-yet-nostalgic NYC indie rock came Yeah Yeah Yeahs, a band composed of frontwoman Karen O, drummer Brian Chase and guitarist Nick Zinner. But on its debut album, 2003's Fever To Tell, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs escaped the confines and conventions of early aughts indie rock through Karen O's ability to match sexuality with intimacy and heartbreak.
After putting out a few heavily hyped and critically successful EPs, Yeah Yeah Yeahs released Fever To Tell on Interscope. The album did well commercially: It was nominated for the Grammy for Best Alternative Music Album and eventually went gold. But its legacy truly lies in its subtext: as a study in both explicit representations of female sexuality and in massive, all-encompassing heartbreak. Fever To Tell operates as a space of feminist transgression; when Karen O gasps for air on "Cold Light," or screams on "Date With The Night," she's creating art that breaks down boundaries in a very public way.
On Fever To Tell, two fundamental styles of Karen O come together. On the one hand, there is Karen O the sexual provocateur and iconoclast garage rocker, the Karen O who douses herself in olive oil and dances on stage in nothing but a pair of pasties, singing as if she were at the brink of orgasm. We encounter this side of Karen O as early as the first track, "Rich," where she pleads for a guy to "stick it in;" she draws in imagery of flesh ripping clean off; she articulates what it feels like to "be a hot noise." In the furiously quick "Tick," she starts the song in a high-pitched shriek, building up the song like a literal time bomb until it explodes and she stops singing altogether and starts moaning. This is an album that is dripping with sex, even on the tracks that are the most heartbreaking.
But the other side of Karen O on this album is the version of her as a woman who has suffered. So what happens when we encounter the heartbreak on this album? What happens when Karen O is just as public about being someone who is capable of falling out of love as she is about the power she wields as a sexual being? This heartbreak shows Karen O as a complex picture: She is a woman who has loved and who has lost, a woman who sings from the bleak other side of having once been deeply and madly in love. More importantly, she explores this part of herself while she talks about sex; she expresses her heartbreak through her confidence in herself. On "Modern Romance," for example, the album's noise and fuzz are dialed back. Everything is sparse; Karen O's lyrics are simple but not understated. "Go get strong," she quivers in the first few seconds of the track. Lyrically, "Modern Romance," is painful. Karen O's words come slowly, one after another; they feel premeditated. This style of drawn out songwriting isn't exclusive to the sadness in "Modern Romance;" it's everywhere on the album. Heartbreak, sex — all of it is expressed with the same care and intentionality”.
There is something very distinct and evocative when it comes to Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ sound. Their debut is such a powerful and immersive listen. You are brought into their world. Albumism did a retrospective of Fever to Tell for its fifteenth anniversary in 2018. There is no other lead like Karen O. She is one of the most astonishing voices in all of music. Fever to Tell was representative of the early-'00s' Garage Rock revival (which artists like The White Stripes a good example). It is Dance/Art Punk of the highest order:
“The sound of Yeah Yeah Yeahs is a certain feeling: under your sneakers the floor is sticky, the beer you’re drinking is clear gold, and the bathroom you just broke the seal in is a mix of graffiti and grime. Lighting in the bar is just dim enough to make eyes at your crush across the crowd. But not before you sweat all over yourself, while you jump along to pounding drums, hurried guitars, and that rasp—Karen O’s voice squeals, roars, and jabs, reminding you that you might not need that someone because you have her.
Karen O (for Orzolek) is a singer-songwriter made of teenage dreams. She can howl at the moon and hum you to sleep in her arms, and either way you’re not alone. The other two-thirds of Yeah Yeah Yeahs are Brian Chase on drums and Nick Zinner on guitar and keyboards. They’re a trio of power in tiny spaces, simple ideas in big places, and pure volume.
Date With The Night” is a ball of fire. One guitar lick stops only so another can pull you in a different direction. The heat is in the underlying, endless oomph of the drums, and the song is over before you know it…with a gasp. Karen O catches her breath right at the end. And that is Yeah Yeah Yeahs: they are wild lightning during the storm. No need for thunder, they’re already plugged in.
The songs go on like this, less than half of them longer than three minutes, and no bass in sight. Their ethos as a band shines through in the track listing of one-word song titles, short phrases echoing their name, “No No No,” and abstract beings and ideas (“Black Tongue” and “Cold Light”). These songs demand attention, even if you’re not sure which way to look. You must look.
Karen O manages to cover every base in the vocal songbook in these songs. Her power is undeniable, even when she’s delicate on the love song “Maps,” their most famous track: “Wait / they don’t love you like I love you / wait / they don’t love you like I love you.” You can imagine her twirling the elongated “maps” she sings around her finger, like a telephone coil, as it leaves her lips.
“Modern Romance” is full of drone and enough hum to remind you of that other famous New York City punk band, the band that started it all for so many. The backwards looping and warble of the guitar, Karen O’s voice ringing layered on itself, and the Christmas bells are all a sound of defeat and texture. “Well I was wrong,” she sings, “it never lasts…there is no / modern romance.”
Not until the last track “Poor Song” is the trio audibly tired. It’s the closest they come to being acoustic here—drums on the rim, the guitar’s timbre more like a bass, and Karen O’s voice stretching from her throat as she sing-talks. It’s a cue to slow down and take stock: “Well I may be just a fool / But I know you're just as cool / And cool kids / They belong together.”
Karen O met Brian Chase at Oberlin College but transferred to NYU where she met Nick Zinner. When their first drummer didn’t work out, Chase stepped in and the trio came alive. It’s cliché to label them as “The Cool Kids,” but it also feels stupid not to. The three of them play with rock and roll in their hands, like putty, to see what else it can be and what it can do. Yeah Yeah Yeahs are raspy and bendy and impossibly spunky.
Fever To Tell was only their beginning, a record of swagger that still shines, even since Yeah Yeah Yeahs have moved out of the barroom and onto the festival circuit (or hell, to the Empire State Building). Last year it was reissued on vinyl for the first time in over a decade with B-sides and rarities, photographs, and an unseen documentary. The band also released a limited edition “The Deluxe Box” that contains even more fan memorabilia and comes signed and wrapped in fishnet stockings.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs are the blaze of electricity in your record collection, a band cemented in rock history as a vibrant powerhouse. If you haven’t made it out to Coney Island to ride the Cyclone (which turned 90 last year!), just turn on Fever To Tell. Every track is a wild ride with a jagged beat, sharp turns, and a classic New York City attitude”.
I am going to end with a review from AllMusic. Even though some reviews have been a bit more mixed, most are extremely positive. Fever to Tell is considered one of the best albums of the 2000s. I don’t think there is a twentieth anniversary edition of the album coming out. It is a shame, as it is quite hard getting a copy at the moment. You can do, but it is quite expensive. Anyway, this is what AllMusic has t say about Fever to Tell:
“On their EPs, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs grew considerably, moving from the arty yet anthemic garage punk of their self-titled EP to Machine's angular urgency. Fever to Tell, their first full-length and major-label debut, also shows growth, but for the first time the band doesn't sound completely in control of the proceedings. Their EPs were masterful studies in contrast and economy, balancing just the right amounts of noise, melody, chaos, and structure within 15 to 20 minutes. At 37 minutes long, Fever to Tell sounds, at different times, scattered and monotonous. Most of this is due to poor sequencing -- the album opens with some of the raunchiest noise the Yeah Yeah Yeahs have ever recorded, then abruptly changes gears and delivers a kitchen sink's worth of pretty ballads and experimental pieces. Both the old and new sides of the band's sound offer brilliant and frustrating moments: "Rich" is a sneering sugar-mommy story; "Black Tongue," which features the great lyric "let's do this like a prison break," is almost Hasil Adkins-esque in its screwed-up sexuality and rockabilly licks.
"Date with the Night," a rattling, screeching joy ride of a song, combines Karen O's unearthly vocals, Nick Zinner's ever-expanding guitar prowess, and Brian Chase's powerful drumming in dynamic ways. Not so good are the insanely noisy "Man" and "Tick," which have enough volume and attitude to make the Kills and Jon Spencer turn pale, but also sound like they're coasting on those qualities. The moody, romantic songs on Fever to Tell are the most genuine. "Pin" and "Y Control" have a bittersweet bounciness, while the unabashedly gorgeous, sentimental "Maps" is not only among the band's finest work but one of the best indie/punk love songs in a long, long time. Along with "Modern Romance," a pretty but vaguely sinister meditation on the lack thereof, these songs compensate for some of Fever to Tell's missteps (such as "No No No," a lengthy, halting mishmash of punk and dubby experimentalism). Perhaps they should've included some of their tried-and-tested songs from their EPs, but for a group this mercurial, that would probably be stagnation. Though this is their debut album, Fever to Tell almost feels like a transitional release; they're already rethinking their sound in radical ways. Even when they're uneven, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs are still an exciting band”.
On 29th April, Yeah Yeah Yeah’s Fever to Tell is twenty. Whether decade-defining songs like Maps and Date with the Night included, I think we will be discussing this album for decades more. Take some time out today to listen to a stirring, stunning and sublime album from New York City’s golden trio of Karen O, Nick Zinner and Brian Chase. Fever to Tell made an impact upon its release in 2003. Its impact, vitality, importance, and brilliance remains…
TO this day.