Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Tool’s Stunning Spectacles Score at Lollapalooza

August 9th, 2009 by J. Edward Keyes Leave a reply »

Karen O has never been one to make safe sartorial choices, but the outfit she was wearing when she and her band, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, took the stage at Lollapalooza was daring even for her. On her head she wore a towering crown made of multicolored cardboard cut-outs of human hands. It was enormous, a towering headdress that flapped and fluttered in the evening breeze. As if that wasn’t enough — she had the cape to match. She was bizarre, entrancing and a joy to watch. In other words, she was Karen O.

Get a look at Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Tool and Lollapalooza’s best in our live photo gallery.

That outlandish outfit served as a good indication of what was to come – a set that was brilliant and daring, bursting with light and color. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs have undergone a bit of a stylistic shift recently, moving away from the take-no-prisoners post-punk that defined their early work toward the glimmer and glide of electronic music. They pulled off the new songs with panache. “Runaway” started slowly and built steadily, while “Heads Will Roll” rocketed up instantly.

Karen O controls the stage with a rare kind of command. Her movements are masterfully controlled: she takes long strides across the lip of the stage, leaps in place, spits water into the air, and lunges down low on one knee. The end result is somewhere between a rock show and a pilates class. She strutted proudly throughtout “Phenomena,” peacock-like in her multi-colored costume.

But just as engaging — and frequently unrecognized — is guitarist Nick Zinner. If O is all brightness and euphoria, Zinner is all coiled potential ener...

Article Source: Rolling Stone : Rock and Roll Daily

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