Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Not that I had anything remotely more valuable to do than wait two hours for Brian Chase, drummer with New York stars the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, to call me; but this filmclip they're shooting had better be good.

"Yeah, an impromptu video shoot was called. It went well, it was a lot of fun. It was very simple, very low budget, the three of us miming our parts in front of a blank white wall. It was kinda silly, kinda goofy. The idea for the video was to take fan submissions of them doing the same thing that we just did, them pretending to be us, acting out our parts. I think we have close to 70 submissions so far, so the thing will be edited and cut-pasted. So the video will mostly be our fans, and interspersed within that will be us."

How very Michael Jackson of them. Filmclips now completed, it seems the Yeah Yeah Yeahs are in a relaxing period of time, enjoying the gap in play between making a record and going on an extensive world tour. In fact, Chase even has time to trawl the Internet.

"You know, it's easy to just take five minutes on the Internet, pull up a hundred reviews," Chase informs me when I ask how he feels the band's second full-length, 'Show Your Bones', has been received. "It seems okay for the most part, some ups and downs, some people were expecting something more along the lines of our first record, and some people are happy with our new material. I get more irritated by specific criticisms and people's writing styles than what they actually say."

Like what? "I think there is a responsibility that goes along with criticism, and putting out public opinion. There are a lot of reviews out there that are more about the person writing the review than [their] subject. Especially with blogs and web journals, it feels like a lot of the reviews are too subjective, they're seen through a very narrow lens, and there's a lack of effort in trying to understand the purpose for the composition, the motivation behind the art. It just becomes, 'I don't like it because it doesn't sound like Jimmy Eat World,' or something."But surely you can't blame bloggers - these people aren't professional rock critics, they're just acne-scarred teenagers writing desperately futile dissertations to be read only by their closest cyberchums.

"But it is the popular voice, really, that's kind of how I see the Internet. So it's just interesting to go through it and see what it's about."

Well then, can you really be critical about the popular voice, it being by definition the appreciation of art by the (mostly ill-informed) people at large?

"That's interesting, in a sense, because there is that freedom of interpretation, and what is a more legitimate way of understanding. There are different ways of listening to our music - if you take someone who has only ever listened to classical music their whole life, and they look at our record from that perspective. Not that we're completely trustful of professional journalists' reviews, or that they have a slant on our record that is completely accurate. We don't always agree with what's said there. But that's just how things go, there is the 'lost in translation' factor in the media.

"I don't necessarily feel like they're ill-informed, because I feel ill-informed also. Because it's all based on our experiences, and how we place things relative to how we have grown to understand music based on our own influences and cultures. Somebody who only listens to mainstream pop, they can also find some really positive aspects in our music, just as somebody who has only listened to Circle Jerks and Black Flag."

So then positive ill-informed criticism is undoubtedly a good thing. "I think there is something really genuine and honest about somebody who just is sincerely inspired by music. I don't think that can ever be questioned, if somebody feels uplifted by a piece of art, they're entitled to their feelings. But with attacking something, first comes the responsibility of making the effort to understand the motivation and intention behind the art, and then from that place, then to go and find the faults in it."

There's a lesson to be learned there by everybody.

Ben Revi

Yeah Yeah Yeahs play the Governor Hindmarsh on Wed 16 August. 'Show Us Your Bones' is out now through Modular