Pompano Beach can be an eerie and uncomfortable place for the Miami traveler. Piles of boats glisten menacingly in harsh parking lot floodlights and pick-up trucks roll along Sample Road, their exteriors plastered with Hooters bumper stickers and creative arrangements of stars and bars.
But the Yeah Yeah Yeahs were performing at Club Cinema, so we hit I-95, marked our parking spot, (walk past Kentucky Fried Chicken, take a right at Tire Kingdom, and venture into the shadows behind the Jiffy Lube garage) and joined throngs of teenagers, whose gross domestic hair product was at least a million gallons.
Entering the darkness of Club Cinema to the final strains of opening band Deer Hunter was a relief of sorts. By the time the YYYs took the stage the menacing world outside was all but forgotten, particularly with the entrance of singer Karen O., whose outfit deserves recounting.
From the bottom up: Red Converse low tops. Over them, gaiters of metallic fabric, the backs crafted to resemble little stegosaurus spines and the fronts adorned with what looked like bicycle streamers. This futuristic look contrasted with her streaked tights, which under the stage lights were a vision of tree bark and lichen. Silver hot pants and a silver halter top. A corset made of something shiny and red that tied from behind. A silver ski cap, complete with ear flaps. Occasionally a metal mask, and a sparkling red and black scarf brandished from time to time in a torero-like fashion. The singer mussed her bowl cut and leapt and frolicked and shrieked, occasionally drinking from a bottle of water and spewing it in the air like a cherub in a Versailles fountain.
The show was sweet, and (as Karen O. announced before launching into an acoustic rendition of "Maps") all four of drummer Brian Chase's grandparents were in attendance, along with Karen's parents and guitarist Nick Zinner's uncle. The band kept waving up at them (they were all seated in a balcony to the side) and giggling. For the encore Karen came out in a purple and yellow unitard, with purple and yellow Nike high-tops. She's like the female Freddy Mercury (ignoring the gender implications of such a statement, which pose a harrowing intellectual dilemma).-Emily Witt