Better Sell It While You Can

Fever to Tell by Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Insound

It was on some night, probably near 11:11 PM when I first heard "Maps" playing on the radio. It wasn't just "Maps", though, it was an acoustic version that bled immediately into an extremely subdued "Y Control". With Karen O's beautifully emotive voice (cracking at times as if the emotion was more than her voice could handle), it was hard for a 13 year old girl who was convinced she was in love to resist.

When I finally got on a computer and really learned how to use the internet, I tried listening to Fever to Tell, believing it to sound like "Maps". In fact, the first half of the album was so noisy I couldn't even get through it, and I didn't listen to the album ever again. Songs like "Tick" seemed almost juvenile, and through the years I brushed off Yeah Yeah Yeahs as mostly a rock 'n' roll band only young girls could love.

Sitting through it again, the "noise" doesn't seem to bother me quite so much. It isn't even that noisy, and though it lasts for about half of the album, it passes by so quickly that it's almost over before you're aware of anything. Of course, the entire album is almost eclipsed by "Maps", which is so beautiful that it by itself makes the album.

As for being "juvenile", there are surprising moments (when they're not trying to imply incest like in "Cold Light" or making little yelps in "Black Tongue") when it feels truly honest, particularly in "Maps", "Y Control" and "Modern Romance".  There are moments of lyrical brilliance, like on "No No No" in which Karen sings, "He'll always come back as the man you dropped/He'll never come back as the man you loved". "Y Control" also has a few moments of brilliance, when she sings "I wish I could buy back/The woman you stole", lamenting how she "believed them all". In "Modern Romance" is truly touching, never relying heavily on repetition of words or any yelping. Here Karen testifies that "there is no modern romance", and that time "stops who it wants" (eventually this line changes to time being able to "stop who he was").

Fever to Tell manages to be good not in any in depth sort of way, but it is enjoyable in the sense that it feels very carefree. The album passes by in a rush, lingering for a moment with "Maps", "Y Control" and "Modern Romance" before it breezily says good bye with "Yeah! New York"