Sure, you could look at Karen O's name on the soundtrack to the film adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are and chalk it up to a convenient byproduct of her close relationship with the film's director, Spike Jonze. But really, there's no one better qualified for the job of translating Maurice Sendak's bedtime-story classic into song. Like Wild Things' young protagonist Max, Karen understands the power of imagination in transforming your mundane surroundings into something spectacular; witness the former Oberlin College student trying to make her way as a folksinger in Unitard, before refashioning herself into the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' beer-spitting, mascara-smeared mouthpiece. Unlike most lead singers with a reputation for physically extreme performances, Karen O's onstage behavior is never really subjected to psychoanalytic interpretation, nor should it be: That giddy, childlike smile she routinely flashes lets us in on the make-believe fantasy of it all, reminding us once again that rock'n'roll is really just the grown-up version of building a fort or playing with dolls.
So for Karen O, Where the Wild Things Are isn't just a soundtrack gig; it's a vessel through which she can again redraft her surroundings. This time, she plays the head mistress of a freak-folk dream-team (christened the Kids) that includes fellow Yeah Yeah Yeahs Nick Zinner, Brian Chase, and Imaad Wasif; Deerhunter's Bradford Cox; Aaron Hemphill of Liars; and Dean Fertita and Jack Lawrence of the Dead Weather. Strangely, the Wild Things trailer that's been burning up YouTube for the past month features not a note of music from this soundtrack album, instead luring us into the movie's magic animal kingdom through the choral grandeur of Arcade Fire's "Wake Up". But that track provides a cue for what Karen O and her Kids are aiming for here: a balance of the folky and fantastical, with immediate, all-together-now hooks designed for maximal campfire communalism.
Children's music, in other words-- though, barring the forced simplicity of lead single "All Is Love" (presented in a simple sing-along and a more dramatic, Funeral-ready form), it's music that's direct and participatory enough to engage the kids without aggressively pandering to them; it won't be hard to get your young'un to shout along to the gleeful, wordless hollers on "Rumpus", but the forceful stomps on which they're delivered serves to remind us that, for all their cheek-pinching cuteness, kids can be nasty, destructive little buggers. While the song titles reference the movie's events and characters, the lyrics rarely do; strip away the requisite film-dialogue snippets, and this set could've been a bonus acoustic companion disc packaged with It's Blitz!. In a sense, this soundtrack serves a similar function for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs as the "MTV Unplugged" series did for grunge acts in the mid-90s-- an opportunity to strip down, but also get more elaborate and pile on the vibes, woodwinds, and other acoustic textures.
However, while the spell-it-out chant "Capsize" and the dust-up jam "Animal" tap into the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' feral energy, they ultimately feel like alternate, restrained versions of songs that would sound more effective and natural in amplified form. And, inevitably, there are a handful of incidental acoustic instrumentals that probably sound better when paired with Jonze's widescreen imagery. But the Wild Things soundtrack boasts enough illuminating, atypical turns from Karen O that make it worth experiencing independent of its source. The languorous lullaby "Hideaway" may be the least kid-friendly song here-- both in its strung-out, hazy-headed performance and my-baby's-gone subject matter-- but is a marvel nonetheless, a come-down sequel to "Maps" that the broken-hearted can comfort themselves with after the tears have dried. And it's no discredit to Karen's efforts to say that the soundtrack's most affecting moment is its lone cover-- for a film concerned with the complicated, conflicted relationship between childish whimsy and the real world, there's no better representative than Daniel Johnston, whose beautifully bruised ballad "Worried Shoes" is given a lovely, touching treatment by Karen. Like Johnston, Karen O has used music to access a fantasy world more exciting than the everyday one. The former's eccentricities put him in a mental hospital; the latter's got her on magazine covers. But the appearance of "Worried Shoes" on this soundtrack underscores the fact that, while our wildest fantasies are uniquely personal, the insecurities that inspire them are universal.
