Last night Yeah Yeah Yeahs — fresh from their appearances at both Lollapalooza and the Virgin Festival — played their first hometown show in New York City since unveiling their latest EP, Is Is. For the occasion, the Webster Hall stage was simply decorated with a Show Your Bones banner and enough sound-altering pedals to power a space launch. Guitarist Nick Zinner and drummer Brian Chase ran onstage in a hurry, but frontwoman Karen O took her time, strolling along while looking over her shoulder as if someone was following her, pacing to the slow drone of Zinner’s guitar in her diamond-cut spandex with strands of sparkly silver plastic hanging from her waist and shoulders like a cape.
The band brazenly led off with non-album track “Sealings,” then plunged into a new, untitled song they wrote just a week ago. Karen O kicked hard with each thrusting beat of “Honeybear,” and leaned into the crowd, where fans’ hands reached out like an octopus’ tentacles, hoping to feel the sweat dripping off her body. The unpredictable frontwoman would go through fits of heavy breathing into her mic, then turn into a whirling dervish, spinning around the stage with reckless abandon, spitting water. Everywhere she went, a trail of tinsel would follow, until the stage was practicaly glittering from below.
The crowd bounced along to “Turn Into” and “Phenomena,” but the show’s most locked-in moment came during “Cheated Hearts,” when Karen O donned a black fedora dripping with shiny silver tinsel from its front brim. With her face completely covered, she was a mystery, shouting out the lyrics “Sometimes I think that I’m bigger than the sound!” While Chase pounded his drums, sending tom hits at the audience like a machine gun, the light show spasmed and Yeah Yeah Yeahs seemed to have the audience almost hypnotized. And Karen O knew exactly where to go from there: into a winding version of “Gold Lion” that ended with screaming and chaos.

Towards the end of the main set, Karen O interrupted the intro to “Maps” to lead the crowd through a sweet version of “Happy Birthday” addressed to their tour manager. Then she returned to the task at hand: Giving her usual speech before a beautiful and sultry version of “Maps.” “This brings us to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs love song,” she wailed into the mic as her parents looked on. “Love is real and this is for each and every one of you!”

Photo: Reuters/Jackson/Landov