{"id":675482,"date":"2026-11-05T06:50:08","date_gmt":"2026-11-05T06:50:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/675482\/"},"modified":"2026-11-05T06:50:08","modified_gmt":"2026-11-05T06:50:08","slug":"yeah-yeah-yeahs-hidden-in-pieces-live-at-the-royal-albert-hall-album-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/675482\/","title":{"rendered":"Yeah Yeah Yeahs: Hidden in Pieces: Live at the Royal Albert Hall Album Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs<\/a>\u2019 mythology was built on abandon. Across Lower East Side dives in the early 2000s, Brian Chase, Nick Zinner, and Karen O put on otherworldly rock shows that verged on performance art\u2014a blaze of vodka-spitting, mic-fellating, IDGAF unruliness and explosive, clamorous tracks. But the indie trio has always operated at two registers: riot, yes, but also ache. That latter quality is there on the back half of Fever to Tell<\/a>, their 2003 debut, and on later ballads like \u201cWarrior\u201d and \u201cSkeletons.\u201d \u201cMaps,\u201d a career-defining song, isn\u2019t a screamer but a torch song about anxious love. You could argue that this heart-on-sleeve vulnerability is what made their early shows so electric. The point was never instigation but pure, unbridled feeling.<\/p>\n

Hidden in Pieces, the band\u2019s first proper live album, leans into that ache, recasting their early friction and ferocity into tender, clear-eyed reflections. Recorded during their 25th-anniversary tour over two nights at London’s Royal Albert Hall (the digital deluxe edition adds highlights from other stops), it adapts selections from across their catalog in more intimate arrangements, often incorporating a string quartet and the hall’s famous organ. It\u2019s a credit to the songwriting that this gentler treatment works so well; peel back the feedback, synths, and drum machines and you\u2019re left with sturdy, versatile songs.<\/p>\n

No score yet, be the first to add.<\/p>\n

The evening begins with a goodbye. David Lynch died a month before the group began rehearsing; in tribute, Karen O, a devoted fan and collaborator, opens with a light, loving rendition of \u201cIn Heaven,\u201d the eerie ditty from his 1977 film Eraserhead. As the band slides into \u201cBlacktop,\u201d with its floaty, tiered arpeggios, it sets the show\u2019s emotional tone: grief folded into celebration, the uncanny beside the sweet.<\/p>\n

The ballads are the main event, and they take on new dimensions in this formal setting. \u201cSkeletons\u201d trades its electronic haze for pitter-pattering snares and pipe organ, and \u201cHyperballad,\u201d a Bj\u00f6rk<\/a> cover that Karen O and Zinner used to play in the East Village when they were \u201cjust kids,\u201d transforms clubby heartbreak into a lullaby. When the crowd takes over the chorus of \u201cMaps,\u201d belting the lyrics like it\u2019s 2004, you can hear Karen O murmur \u201choly shit\u201d just off mic\u2014a fair reaction to that much collective emotion. Through it all, her voice is a revelation: It shakes, drops into spoken word, and reaches for notes that don\u2019t always land. But the imperfections only make her more commanding. When she sings, you believe her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Yeah Yeah Yeahs\u2019 mythology was built on abandon. Across Lower East Side dives in the early 2000s,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":675483,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[692,93,61,60,278,514],"class_list":["post-675482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-albums","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-music","tag-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=675482"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675482\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/675483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=675482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=675482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=675482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}