Some folks, some of ‘em Yeah Yeah Yeah friends, tried to dissuade me: “it’ll be a madhouse of screaming kids all the way down the block,” “…uncomfortably crowded,” “…not a concert but some kind of tedious video shoot”… We’re getting so old, and their logic is totally understandable, but this was one of the rare occasions when my impracticality and intuition was triumphant.

After witnessing a number of Yeah Yeah Yeahs performances around the turn of the millennium, I last saw them at a small gig at Sine three or four years ago. And, while I had no idea what to expect at this point in their career, especially from a video shoot, I decided the time was now – particularly because they were appearing at my kind of venue, Williamsburg’s Glasslands Gallery. It wasn’t just that the band was playing an intimate show – but at the kind of raw underground spot they originally crawled out of a few years back.

I rounded the corner onto an oddly hushed street to find no line at the door whatsoever. Inside they told me that the eighty lucky kids who won tickets were being confined to a room down the hall until showtime. A small bunch of neighborhood folks, many of ’em longtime local music scene fixtures, milled around and chatted while Nick Zinner casually tuned his guitar and Karen O, already in a white black Pollock-splattered superhero costume, stretched in the corner. An informal scene.

Before long they led the fans inside, turned off the lights, and let ‘em go. With the exception of a row of small Christmas lights near the top of the high ceiling reflecting off of a mirrored background, the room was nearly pitch black. The crowd was given Zoro-ish masks that resembled Karen’s trademark Daryl Hannah Blade Runner-ish raccoon makeup. The videographers were a part of the crowd – small cameras in hand. The lack of both bright light and cumbersome cameras created a totally unobtrusive atmosphere.

Either I forgot what a stellar live force the Yeah Yeah Yeahs were, or they vastly improved, or, more likely, a combination of both, but band was spot on from the first note. Tearing through an aggressive and concise set, they laid down material from across their repertoire: “Phenomena, “Rich,” “Date With The Night,” as well as “Art Star” and a couple of other oldies. There were also a couple I didn’t recognize.

I was initially struck by how Brian Chase’s drumming, still possessing a jazzy twist, had become so muscular – even Bonhamesque at points. Nick, always one of my favorite NYC guitarists, hasn’t only broadened his tone into an entire band’s worth of sound, and razor-sharpened his already substantial chops, but he’s developed into a super-physical rocker with all the moves. Speaking of which, the inimitably charismatic Karen O, who continues to be one of the more flamboyantly electrifying front-women out there, exercizing more restraint while expanding her bag of tricks, has honed her tension and release to the maximum effect, both vocally and performance-wise.

Correctly prepared to find a tight seasoned unit at work, I was shocked to also discover a much harder, heavier, noisier Yeah Yeah Yeahs – quite the opposite of what I anticipated after hearing their last album. A few hours later I’m still totally shaken and in awe of how they brought it. I’d love to find something to kvetch about, but everything, the band, the sound, the crowd, the venue, the event in general, was way beyond my expectations.

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs are at the peak of their powers.

Initially considering omitting the barely legible camera phone photos taken in the darkness, I’ve chosen to include a few that, at best, may exude ambiguously shady bootleg charm….