When the pandemic struck in 2020, Karen Lee Orzolek set about building what she considered a “portal” in the closet at the foot of her stairs. Orzolek, better known as Karen O, the spectacularly charismatic frontwoman of Yeah Yeah Yeahs, experienced the blocked contraction of her world along with everyone else. Unlike everyone else, however, Orzolek is a rock star in the true sense of the word – a woman accustomed to selling huge halls with a group triple nominated for a Grammy, whose driving spirit over the past 22 years comes from a whirlwind of ideas that now seem almost outdated. : that rock music can set you free, that challenge can change the world, that transcendence through art is possible.
Recalling that strange year he spent at home in Los Angeles, 43-year-old Orzolek thinks of worms first: “My son was really into worm hunting in our backyard; “I remember life shrinking so we could go worm hunting with him,” she said with a smile. Second, she remembers the concerts she did in this closet, mini-Instagram shows, for which she would transform her small space into a “different world” each time. Balloons, streamers, whatever is needed – the jubilant DIY spirit of the group prevails.
These months of a peak pandemic were the first time she was a child when Orzolek saw the time as inappropriate: “Isn’t it so fascinating how these hard times can bring so many revelations?” Now, nine years after the last recording of Yeah Yeah Yeahs , this sense of revelation runs through their triumphant fifth album, Cool It Down. Finely calibrated between widescreen emotion and sonic precision, it sounds ready to sweep away the exhausted by their stupor and is the band’s best proof of their idealistic spirit.
It’s mid-May, and Orzolek arrived early on the sun terrace of a Los Angeles hotel wearing a sky-blue jumpsuit that makes her look like a chic garage employee. A stylish old woman jumps from a table next door to tell her it’s amazing: did she do it herself? Orzolek thanks her and tells her no, her best friend did. This is the designer Christian Joy, whose outer costumes shaped the iconography of the band from the very beginning. On the phone, Joy remembers the first one she made for Orzolek: “It was this really ugly, torn blue prom dress that said ‘Yes, yes, yes’ everywhere, and it had all those plastic flowers hanging from it. It was ugly and she shook it. “
In September 2020, Orzolek attracted Joy again. The band was 20 years old and Orzolek wanted to celebrate with a concert performance, which would be a show of love. To that end, she needed clothes reminiscent of the cluttered abundance of their 2003 debut album, Fever to Tell. The concept, Joy says, was something like, “Crazy mom at a kid’s party who went all over the table.” Sometimes he wonders when Orzolek will reach the point where he is like, “Okay, I can’t wear these things anymore.” I want to say that now we are all in our 40s … ”
In the video, Orzolek appears against the backdrop of shiny rainbow ribbons, wearing a shiny hat bristling with balloons, and a dress made of a shower curtain strewn with party stools. Then, with drummer Brian Chase and guitarist Nick Ziner broadcast on video, she sang their most indelible love song, Maps. It seems a sweet irony that a band known for not caring must have this crude distillation of longing to be their most famous song. Yet both the Cards and the carnival-like disinhibition of live broadcasts seem to come from the same source: a renunciation of self-awareness.
Ziner comes to the terrace: pale, dressed in black and trembling in the sun, he mutters dryly that he is “wild” as he searches for the darkest corner of the table. His demeanor, Tim Burton’s enchanted character, turns him into a charming foil for Chase’s Labrador enthusiasm as he pulls up a chair and says, “Okay! Los Angeles! “Chase, 44, is the only New York supporter; Orzolek moved to LA in 2004, and Ziner, after traveling back and forth between the two cities, finally moved in 2020. People they still suggest, Orzolek says good-naturedly, that they all still live in New York.
Karen O performed at T in the Park, near Kinross, in 2013. Photo: PA Images / Alamy
The more coffee and cabbage are ordered, the greater the size of these three people who have known each other for so long. “When we started in 2000, we were inspired by the music that came out in 1980,” says Ziner with quiet surprise. “You know, ESG or New Order… and I can’t think the beginning of our band is the middle ground between these things.”
Both Chase and Orzolek are now parents, but all three still look like the awkward, awe-inspiring children who have gathered in New York. When I assume that stupidity is at the heart of the group, Orzolek agrees seriously, then looks at the table to let one thought merge: “God, give me a second, because it’s huge…” Still thinking, she suggests replica remark: “Don doesn’t take your tongue out of your cheek!”
“Did you just come up with that?” Chase says, impressed. “That’s brilliant.”
She laughs at that. The creative ideal for Orzolek is “if you can be in the sandbox forever.” On the one hand, it’s disarming. “That was something she tried to understand in the band’s earliest days.” I mean, New York is a heavy crowd. These are very exhausted people who have seen it all. Then the question was, “How do I disarm this crowd from their own self-consciousness?” The answer was by attracting a wave of sexuality, absurdity and anger, getting rid of self-consciousness. And that frees Brian and Nick! I mean, damn it, the three of us when we’re up there: I really feel like a radical freedom.
“Speaking out with this band,” says Ziner, with full eye contact, “is the greatest thing in the world.”
The band in 2022. Photo: David Black
However, after the release of Mosquito in 2013, it was not certain that there would be another record of Yeah Yeah Yeahs. The band had fulfilled their contract with Universal and thus got rid of the cycle of writing, recording, touring. A few years later, Orzolek had a son, Django, with her husband, director Barnaby Clay. “I’m glad I managed to squeeze one,” she said. “And then I was a wreck a few years after that.” The band remained in a close relationship, but only at the end of 2019 they started talking about new music. In early 2020 came what they call the “Black Dragon Conversation.”
“Karen and I had dinner and hung out and drank this sake called Black Dragon,” Ziner explains. That led to the worst hangover in her life, Orzolek said. But tonight was also the first time she had expressed a willingness to start writing again.
“They were extremely patient waiting for me to come,” she told her bandmates. The Black Dragon talk acknowledged the trauma of the Trump years, plus “baggage and pressure from just 20 years to be a family,” leaving all three with one guiding question: “How can we do this in the happiest, pressure-free way? “
Soon after Ziner sent Orzolek a folder of ideas, the pandemic arrived. It wasn’t long before forest fires began to rage in LA, and Orzolek recalled “this ticking clock” of ecological doom. Confused by listening to so much music that seemed like an escape, she longed to hear a reflection of her emotions – not least the dizziness of parenthood and “bringing a new life into a world that feels so insecure.” The mood of the first track of the album, Spitting Off the Edge of the World, is challenging – in particular “disobedience to destruction. I wanted to tell my child that not everything is lost.
You have to be so open and almost innocent … Making music in this band is a sure haven for great feelings Karen Oh
“There’s what I’m describing as increasing and decreasing the quality of life right now,” Chase said. “The more I shrink, the more I realize how problematic life is. In which field do I place myself? Am I holding things right now or how much do I commit to dealing with bigger circumstances? ”
“I just come across it every day,” says Orzolek. “To write music, you have to be great friends with mystery and uncertainty. When Nick and I first get into jam or whatever, we have this affinity and confidence in the mysterious process of how music arrives. You have to be so open and almost innocent. I know I’m good at it when it comes to making music in this band – it’s a safe haven for great feelings. “
The songs came out faster than ever, with Orzolek overwhelmed by an urgency Fever to Tell hadn’t experienced. The result is a bombastic studio recording that conveys a sense of cosmic awe with punk ridicule: when guest artist Perfume Genius sings in the euphoric opening track for the sun “melting houses of gold”, it’s both spitting “fuck” capitalist greed and wide-ranging they “to our planet. Cool It Down is also, Orzolek notes, “the calmest record between me and Nick – I just felt so nice.”
“Just to see these things come out of Karen, seemingly instantly,” Ziner muttered, “it was so cool.”
Yes, yes, yes in 2001. Photo: Allstar Picture Library / Alamy
Yeah’s first show Yeah Yeahs in 2000 was the first of three debuts for a little-known band called the White Stripes. “To play a show at the Mercury Lounge, to play a show in New York – that was it! says Orzolek. Besides, they had little or no ambition. “I don’t know if the blows did it or someone did it. Everyone did it simply because they wanted to; it just happened…
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