Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Shepherd’s Bush Empire

Fresh from their warm-up providing the main attraction at Camden Crawl the previous night the NYC threesome are ready with a full hour and a half set to blow your socks off. Emerging dressed in a mask you would normally only catch a Mexican wrestler in, complete with a neon pink spiral, any worries about Karen O’s stage repertoire having calmed over the years are quickly banished. Also banished are any fears that the new disco sound might not fit in with their awesome back catalogue; as opener ‘Heads Will Roll’, with added punk bite in comparison to the record, slides effortlessly into the anarchy of ‘Black Tongue’. The collective sigh of relief from established fans is immediately drowned out by the wall of noise as the band hit their stride with ‘Phenomena’ and hark back to their sharp, punchy beginnings with ‘Miles Away’.

Always the entertainer Karen O treats the crowd to plenty of other-worldly dance moves and the odd run, jump and fall but absolutely no banter between songs as Brian Chase works his magic without pause.

The synths of ‘Zero’, their catchiest song to date, and the use of glitterbombs as a stage prop surely provide evidence that the YYYs are currently as close as they are going to get to mainstream, but as it syncs effortlessly into their punk roots you get the feeling that their current sway was a musical choice rather than their bank manager wanting some of what Kings Of Leon have got.

There is still plenty of time for more of both the old and the new as Nick Zinner is only just warming up; he still has to bash his way through ‘Pin’, thrash out the blunted chords of ‘Gold Lion’ and stop the room dead in its tracks for the ethereal ‘Skeletons’.

As always Karen O peaks in the more mellow of moments, and in dedicating the encore of ‘Maps’ to everybody in the audience’s loved ones, before performing it at its spine-tingling best, she does just that. Then with the audience at their most fragile the band rip them apart, throwing them face first into ‘Way Out’ and the crunching ‘Date with the Night’.

With a back catalogue of three albums and three EPs spanning the best part of a decade the only downer on the night is the no show of favourites such as ‘Bang’, ‘Tick’ and ‘Cheated Hearts’, and it is only this that stops this being the perfect gig. They may be about to crossover, they may never make it, but either way the Yeah Yeah Yeahs are currently the band to beat.