Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Though far from unpersonable during a brief phone conversation, Yeah Yeah Yeahs drummer Brian Chase confided that he doesn’t enjoy being interviewed all that much. “It starts to feel like moments when I’m talking to my parents, and they insist on me telling them about what’s going on in my life,” Chase said somewhat uncomfortably. “And I feel like it’s redundant and I’m backtracking a lot to kind of catch them up on what’s going in. It takes a lot of willful patience for me to get through it.”

    Chase is probably the most unassuming member of Yeah Yeah Yeahs, especially when matched against the gaunt, disaffected visage of impressively coiffed guitarist Nick Zinner and the over-the-top persona of unlikely fashion icon/frontwoman Karen O. However, Chase remains just as vital a part of the trio’s potent chemistry. A jazz performance major at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio, Chase related that his drum work for Yeah Yeah Yeahs draws from his jazz background. 



    “I think there were some really valuable skills that I’d learned as a jazz musician, especially the ability to interpret melody through gestures on the drums,” Chase explained. “In rock drumming, you’re mostly restricted to time-keeping without much regard for melody or impressions of pitches or tonality. I think having a background as an improviser, working with various wind and brass instruments, gave me the ability to interpret Karen’s lyrics and melodies with a greater range.”

    Unfortunately, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ solid songwriting and musicianship often get lost in the shuffle amidst their more sensational aspects. The buzz surrounding Fever to Tell, the band’s breakthrough album on Interscope, was near deafening, taking the New York-based trio from obscurity to stardom. “The whole buzz thing surrounding the first record was kinda tedious,” Chase admitted. “We always felt there was a different representation of us in the media that conflicted with how we felt about ourselves. And the idea of thinking that we’re more than what we are was a hard thing to reconcile…I felt like we were often portrayed as one dimensional and fad-ish. That never sat well with me.”

    Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ second major label release, Show Your Bones, demonstrates the band’s ability to produce pulsing grooves, emotive guitar textures that range from shimmering to dirty and, of course, memorable vocal hooks (such as “Sometimes I think I’m bigger than the sound” from “Cheated Hearts”). Show Your Bones should erase any doubts that the Yeah Yeah Yeahs were simply benefactors of a passing garage rock fad, ensuring them a place in the spotlight for the foreseeable future — whether Chase and company like it or not.

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