One has to wonder why the Yeah Yeah Yeahs are touring. Their debut album Fever to Tell is a year old, while their forthcoming album is unlikely to be seen until 2005. With nothing to promote, perhaps the New York threepiece need the money. Or perhaps they just enjoy it. Frontwoman Karen O seems to be having fun, bounding on to the stage to the menacing atmospherics of Y Control, swinging her coat round her head like an exultant football prodigy.
One expects O to look a sight. Much of the early hype about the band centred around her punkish, erotically charged appearance. True to form, her dress is short, her tights are ripped and her PVC gloves stretch up to her forearms. Her mannerisms are an occasionally unsettling mix of the gleeful and the knowing: she prowls, prances, giggles, flounces and takes the mike in her mouth, breathing in deeply.
It's been hard to shake the suspicion that this magnetic presence is the band's raison d'être. Fever to Tell is a fine record, but not an outstanding one. About midway through the gig, you start to wonder if the Yeah Yeah Yeahs cannot do what the White Stripes can: make a few instruments fill a large venue.
Ironically, what saves them is the music. Guitarist Nick Zinner and drummer Brian Chase do not just hold things together: they break across O's vocal theatrics, race alongside her urgent cries and play some tremendous, radical rock music. Maps places a sweet song of devotion over crashing drums and knife-edge guitar, early single Machine is streamlined and vicious, and a new song sounds promising indeed.
By the encore, O has donned a silver catsuit, a red cape and what appears to be a pair of ear patches. Not many performers could finish a gig looking like a SuperTed villain. O does it with joyous, genuine verve, pausing Modern Romance with a raised finger so she has time to laugh, and rushing off the moment its aching guitar riff falls silent.
· At the Forum, London NW5 (0870 534444), tonight and tomorrow, and the Old Market, Hove (01273 736222), on Sunday.
