Bigger than the sound

Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Leeds Academy, 29/11/09

Perhaps I’m just being nostalgic for days gone by, but you don’t seem to get amazing support bands any more. There’s plenty of competent ones, and the once in a blue moon stunner, but more often than not the opening act do nothing more but increase your trips to the bar.

I wrote out a whole piece slagging the support from tonight into little dirty pieces...but decided against it. There’s enough trolling on the internet as it is. Let’s just leave it at They Weren’t Very Good and move on.

Thank fuck for Karen O.

A giant eye looked out over the proceedings, as shadowed shapes took to the stage, one of them unmistakably wearing a giant rug of some description. The hushed refrain of Runaway brought a quieter opening than I was expecting, although the song does rumble upwards into a climax that merges into Rich, and then we’re off.

Karen O is all teeth and eyes, the impression of that mile wide grin staying with you long after the night is over. She skipped and bowed her way through a set that contained nothing but highlights. Seeing them at Leeds Festival this year was bloody beautiful as previously mentioned, but this was the full show I was waiting for.

The crowd was full of lots of mini O’s-In-Training, perfect bowlchops and liberal make-up agendas, screaming adulation at their heroine and her trio of sonic superheroes.

Skeletons probably got the biggest reaction from me, a few tears and a phone call to the girl who really should have been with me that night. It’s a song for the sunrise on the morning after, equal parts hope and regret.

Cheated Hearts got extended with some audience participation, Maps got a full band airing (as much as I love the acoustic version, you can’t beat the thump of the drums and Nick Zinner’s soaring guitar line) and Zero quite literally got the leather on.

Then, in one of the more perfect encores I’ve ever witnessed, Y Control, Turn Into and Date With The Night made good use of the glitter and ticker tape cannons placed in strategic stomping points around the stage.

Their sound may have matured from the garage into the Discotheque, but each era slots next to the other, expertly sown together with an effortless cool.

Because that’s what the Yeah Yeah Yeahs are. Cool. In look, in sound, in everything.