Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Fever to Tell (2003)

I remember being introduced to Yeah Yeah Yeahs a long time ago, but my first introduction to them was through their second album Show Your Bones, which I still think is probably their worst album. I borrowed that CD from a library because I had heard some good things about the band. I have to say that I wasn't too impressed with their music back then. It was too noisy and not melodic enough for my taste. If there's one thing that's important to me in music, it's the melody. This is why I've had trouble liking genres where melody is put into second place after lyrics or sounds. After that, not so successful, introduction into the band, I forgot about it for a few years. Then I started listening through albums in the book 1001 albums you must hear before you die and listened to band's third studio album It's Blitz! and that changed my view of the band.


I really liked It's Blitz! because it was more straightforward indie rock and much more melodic than Show Your Bones. Perhaps this eats a bit of my credibility as I'm sure the true fans of the band prefer the early albums. However, this album was a necessary gateway drug to the early albums. Otherwise I might've never gotten interested in the band. The same book led me to listen to the band's debut album Fever to Tell and now that I had gotten my introduction though a more melodic third album, I had a more positive view of the band and I could see the strength of this debut album.

Fever to Tell is raw and powerful. It shows that attitude and sounds go a long way even when the songs themselves aren't necessarily that interesting. As I already said, this kind of approach doesn't always work with me, but there are moments when I can also appreciate these qualities. I just need a right kind of mood to listen to music like that. When I started broadening my musical horizons, partly as a result of reading the book about the 1001 albums, I felt like I needed to own some of those albums as well and I ended up buying this album. I have to say I haven't listened to it that much, probably because I have difficulties in finding the right kind of mood for it, but I'm still glad I own some stuff like that to give my music library a bit more variety.

The album starts with piercing harmonics played on an electric guitar in the song Rich. This song has definitely some interesting sounds. It's not an obvious hit, but it's one of my favourite songs on the album because of it's interesting sound world. Date With the Night is a more conventional Yeah Yeah Yeahs song. The disco beat and noisy punk style puts it in the same category as bands like Le Tigre or CSS. Man has a slower and distorted beat that sounds super raw. The guitars sort of sound like The White Stripes. Tick has guitars that remind me of 60s garage rock. It's sometimes difficult to see the similarities between 60s and more modern garage rock, but in songs like this it becomes more apparent what's in common with the genre. Black Tongue brings on more echo and as such it sets the song closer to the indie music of the 00s. The squeals in the vocals are a bit strange. Pin starts with more conventional indie guitars that remind me of bands like The Libertines. The vocals are also a bit more melodic in this song and that probably makes this one of my favourite songs on the album. Cold Light has guitars and drums in unison which makes me think of The White Stripes. There's something similar in vocals to Meg White as well. No No No eases the sounds down a bit and I think that's really needed at this stage of the album. The song does grow as it progresses, but there are pockets of air in this song. Maps is one of the biggest hits from this band and it's the one song that really caught my attention. The vocals are closer to singing than yelling, which made me like the song even when I didn't like rest of the song by this band as much. Y Control brings out some strange electronic synth sounds that ties Yeah Yeah Yeahs closer together with many other bands in the genre of dance punk. Modern Romance has some really lo-fi guitars that orchestrate this almost a ballad of a song, if you can call it that. The album ends with Poor Song, a song that completely brings the volume down to bare lo-fi aesthetic with absolutely no echo.

Music video for Maps is quite a typical indie music video. It starts in some kind of an office space/gym hall, where people's work is interrupted by the band who's climbing on stage at the back of the room to play the song live. The rest of the song is pretty much just performed on stage as a live music video. The strange thing is that Karen O seems to b crying through parts of the performance even though she's otherwise rocking the stage.

What I've noticed while doing this blog is that when I dedicate myself to listening to full albums in my music library, I like them a lot more than I think I do. This goes to show that we should really give a bit more time to actually listening to music and not just keeping it in the background of our lives. Music becomes so much more meaningful when you dedicate yourself to just listening. This is why I prefer physical albums to streaming or mp3s. At least to me, putting on a physical album, makes it much more meaningful. I enjoyed this album a lot and I feel like I'm probably going to listen to it a bit more from now on.

Listen to the album on Spotify.