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Concert reviews Music

Yeah Yeah Yeahs

YEAH YEAH YEAHS at Echo Beach, Monday (July 1).


There’s no one quite like Karen Orzolek. The lead singer of New York indie rock mainstays the Yeah Yeah Yeahs has been captivating audiences since 2000 with her mix of scrappy shrieking, heart-on-sleeve ballads, live theatrics and bedazzled costumes only she could pull off.

Touring in support of their latest album Mosquito, the trio’s Canada Day show at a packed Echo Beach proved drummer Brian Chase, guitarist/keyboardist Nick Zinner and Karen O are far from a mid-life band crisis. Starting at a very prompt 9:30 pm, Karen O bounded onstage wearing a tasseled blazer and white sequined capris. A mesmerizing force to watch, she exuded complete control, emotional vulnerability and raw sexuality (at one point she unzipped her pants and shoved her microphone down them) – sometimes within the span of one song. The set list was perfectly culled from across their entire discography, including fan favourites Gold Lion, Heads Will Roll and Maps (dedicated to “all you lovers out there”). While the new record has received mixed reviews, gospel-influenced Sacrilege and percussion-sparse Subway sounded fantastic live, the former anchored by Zinner’s guitar mastery.

There might have been more patriotic July 1st activities elsewhere, but the crowd’s reaction as Karen O returned clutching a small Canadian flag for an encore that included early YYYs songs Tick and Date With The Night while fireworks went off in the distance suggested they wouldn’t rather have been anywhere else.

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