“Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute and it seems like an hour,” Albert Einstein once explained his theory of relativity. “Sit next to a pretty girl for an hour and it seems like a minute.”

The theory is all too obvious for Yeah Yeah Yeahs fans dancing up a sweat in Thebarton Theatre the night the New York trio return to Adelaide. While the torturous dirge of Circle Pit is like a lengthy visit to tuneless shoegaze hell, Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ fleeting set feels like it’s sand passing through our fingers. The dozen songs that fill their breathless set race by in a blitz of colours, confetti and inflatable eyeballs, with frontwoman Karen O the frenzied eye of the musical storm.

Although the male contingent of Yeah Yeah Yeahs offer talented support to Queen Karen, their innocuous black garb hints they’re well aware of their background roles. Drummer Brian Chase’s simple We Will Rock You drum intro to Gold Lion is followed by guitarist Nick Zinner slashing at a ripping riff, but this is Karen O’s show. Framed by a backdrop featuring an ominous eyeball and a hypnotic swirl of tinsel, Karen arrives in a blur of Christian Joy fashions for opener Dull Life and doesn’t stop recklessly throwing herself around the stage until the dying moments of combustible closing tune Date With The Night. In the space of the first 10 minutes, the showgirl spits water into the air like a playsuited fountain, howls like a friendless ghost while tugging at her hoodie and then dons an electric neon mask for Heads Will Roll.

Having twirled her way through the It’s Blitz hit and brandished the microphone like she’s baptising the throng with holy water, Karen lifts her right index finger to her head and ‘shoots’ herself as the song ends. It seems a wordless admission that tonight’s heat is quickly sapping her energy levels, but she’s not defeated just yet.

After stuffing her pink microphone in her mouth for Pin and slinking across the stage drenched in sweat for a sleazy Shame And Fortune, O walks to the front of the stage draped in a towel and looking like a bruised prize fighter.

Jumping into the pit during Cheated Hearts, O returns to the stage for the shimmering Skeletons wearing a fluoro headdress of plastic hands complemented by a short kimono. Adding to the song’s subdued emotions, the eyeball backdrop has turned into a bright moon orb as a mist of heat floats over the crowd. 

Although the acoustic version of Maps (“A Yeah Yeah Yeahs southern love song” according to O) doesn’t quite work without the soft/jagged duality, the explosion of Y-shaped confetti that showers the audience during Date With The Night can’t shake the ecstatic looks of the crowd as the lights go up.

Good, good things happen in bad towns.

Words and photo by Scott Mclennan

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