If you don't have an iTunes music store account, now would be a good time to sign up for one, because the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' exclusive live set has finally gone live. It's only four songs, but the revelations they contain are fascinating. Like: that without all of the distortion--and without Brian Chase, who has been winning Drummer of the Year awards from the Institute of Me every year since their first EP--their songs have this beautiful, airy fragility to them, like a hologram that would fall apart forever if you put your hand through it. And that Sonic Youth's "Diamond Sea," the only song that's ever made me cry on first listen, is still one of the best Beach Boys songs ever written. And that everyone who talks about Karen O strictly in terms of multiple-simultaneous-beer-pourings and Spike-Jonze-datings needs to stop now. When she wordlessly sings Nick Zinner's solo in "Turn Into"--which, by the way, is Song of the Year For Real--and when she makes the ooh-oohs in "Gold Lion" sound strangely, invasively sexual, it's like she's just now realizing the extent of her power.
