The darlings of 00s indie sleaze shook jaded audiences into life with their raucous rock’n’roll. Twenty years later, facing ecological catastrophe and middle age, can they do it again?
When the pandemic hit in 2020, Karen Lee Orzolek set about constructing what she thought of as a “portal” in a closet at the foot of her stairs. Orzolek, better known as Karen O, the spectacularly charismatic frontwoman of Yeah Yeah Yeahs, was experiencing the locked-down contraction of her world along with everyone else. Unlike everyone else, however, Orzolek is a rock star in the truest sense of the word – a woman used to selling out huge venues with a triple-Grammy-nominated band whose driving spirit these past 22 years comes from a swirl of notions that now seem almost antiquated: that rock music might set you free, that defiance can change the world, that transcendence through art is possible.
Remembering that odd year spent at home in Los Angeles, Orzolek, 43, thinks first of worms: “My son was really into worm-hunting in our backyard; I remember life shrinking down to going on worm hunts with him,” she says with a smile. Second, she thinks of the concerts she did in that closet, mini broadcasts over Instagram for which she would transform her tiny space into “a different world” each time. Balloons, streamers, whatever it took – the band’s gleeful DIY spirit prevails.
