Fever to Tell

Yeah Yeah Yeahs

If you trolled MTV (or MuchMusic if you're a canuck like me) in 2003, it was impossible to avoid the video for Maps. In retrospect, it is widely considered to be one of the best songs of the 2000s and I think I'd have to agree. It's a tender love song with a tremolo picked guitar note that runs like a thread through the entire song. Karen O's incredibly vulnerable performance expresses deep heartbreak, especially with sincere phrases like "wait, they don't love you like I love you." The drum beat was urgent and the passages with searing, overdriven guitar gave the track a little bit of an edge to elevate it from being 'just another love song.' I was drawn to the song upon my first listen, but never really ventured further into the band. The song kept popping up, reminding me how great it was, and eventually when I was old enough to start buying my own records, I picked up Fever to Tell expecting more of the same. That is not at all what I got and it launched me into a whole new musical world I had not explored yet.

I wish I could've seen my face when I got 45 seconds into Rich and heard Karen O shred her vocal cords for the first time. Or during the no wave freakouts on Date With the Night where guitars are exploding, cymbals are crashing, and Karen O once again performing like a lunatic. This record was noisier, more chaotic, and unrestrained compared to some of the post-hardcore and emo records I was probably into at the time, and yet, it made you want to dance. Fever to Tell felt freeing, thanks in large part I think to Karen O's larger than life presence. She's not the most capable vocalist, but her swagger and unshakeable confidence more than compensate for this. Aside from some of the more tender moments towards the end of the record, nearly every vocal performance O delivers is totally unhinged.

That's not to say the rest of the band is being carried, as I also love the sound of Nick Zinner's guitar on this record. The guitar is detuned to kind of make up for the lack of a bass player, it has that Fender twang, and the combination of drive and reverb really helps make the guitar feel really large despite, to the best of my knowledge, a ton of multi-tracking. I love the tracks where he rides these single note phrases in the lower register creating this droning sound as demonstrated on songs like Y Control and Black Tongue. Brian Chase's contributions behind the kit are also incredibly unique for a band like this. Chase takes his background in jazz drumming and applies it in this more rock context in a way that feels just as spontaneous and unpredictable as Karen O does on the microphone. In fact, I may have just realized that what might make this record so magnetic is the chemistry between these three performers and how they appear to be operating on the exact same wavelength.

Fever to Tell only gets a few complaints from me. Rich has moments where the production feels a little thin and the energy isn't really conveyed to its maximum potential. Tick perhaps goes a little too far off the deep end. And despite having Karen O's most sensual performance, Cold Light is in my opinion the least catchy song on the record. Regardless of my issues with the record, it's still one of the best dance punk records ever made. If you're looking for something noisy, raw, but also incredibly fun, then give this record a spin.