Yeah Yeah Yeahs
“Self-Titled”
(Shifty)
There’s a garage rock revival that the record companies are whipping up and it’ll soon become a frenzy, but I’m all for it as long as it results in bands like the White Stripes and Yeah Yeah Yeahs getting signed. Yeah Yeah Yeahs (henceforth YYY) have a rumbling, bassless, college rock sound that is comparable to the current garage rock all stars like The White Stripes and others, but YYY is also their own type of duck. The female vocals do more for the lo-fi guitar and drum work than could a parade of similarly talented bands with male front-men (as opposed to male front-women?). Hmm, front-women, sounds like some kind of DOM thing involving large bulbous protuberances arising from the groin area. Okay…
I’m sure everyone picks on this garage wave by comparing the bands to the Stooges, which is reasonable. I’d do that to YYY, but only to the Stooges first album and even that slights the band by not giving credit to their obvious eighties influences. The people in the garage wave grew up through the eighties as MTV fed children. The garage wave is assembling the sixties melodies mixed with production sounds that would have been at home in the seventies, and combining it all under the smooth synth-pop formulas of the eighties except without the synth and without the genital frothing lunatic ravings about wealth, lust, and a lust for wealth. Shit, it sure as hell beats having to listen to yet another Powerman 90210.
