W

span class="caption" style="width: 339px;">Wait: The Yeah Yeah Yeahs performed to a crowd on Friday night in Jakarta. JP/Ricky Yudhistira Revelers at Friday’s Love Garage festival could be forgiven if they left feeling like no one loves them quite like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs love them.

Performing for the first time in Jakarta, the garage punk band previewed new songs from their anticipated album Mosquito, to be released in April, and rocked out to old favorites like “Maps”, singing the famous words: “Wait, they don’t love you like I love you.”

The trio attracted thousands of Jakarta’s trendy to the music festival that also featured American indie rock band Ra Ra Riot, Homogenic and Rock n Roll Mafia.

A blonde Karen O was adorned in an Elvis-in-Vegas red-glitter suit with a zebra-print cape and a crown with the word “Yeah”. Screeching and throwing herself around, she made low screams into the microphone held between her teeth and jet-sprayed water in one of her tortured on-stage tantrums.

But she was unable to wipe the smile off her face, and it was immediately clear that the band was just as excited about their comeback from a long stage absence as their fans were. “We’ve been waiting for you for 13 years, Jakarta!” a wild-eyed Karen O screamed to the crowd.

Despite widespread criticism of Mosquito’s album cover (which resembles an animated Chucky doll being stung by a monstrous pink mosquito), from the preview Jakarta got on Friday night it sounds like the album will be yet another success for the group who hasn’t released an album since It’s Blitz! in 2009.

Determined to get it right after three successful studio albums, the new track “Mosquito” resembles the lo-fi tones of their first, Fever To Tell. With Karen O snarling lyrics like “I’ll suck your blood” in her familiar husky and sinister voice, it has been described as very “Rocky Horror-esque” by critics.

Another new track, “Earth”, was eerily spaced out and reminiscent of some of the slow-paced songs on disco-rock album It’s Blitz!. The slow song was importantly propped up by one of drummer Brian Chase’s erratic-yet-punctual beats.

That tone was reiterated several songs later with “Subway”, one of the more moody tracks the trio have produced. With an almost whispering Karen O, Nick Zinner faded in and out with effects-laden licks, proudly displaying an “I love Indonesia” sticker on his guitar.

Clearly the trio is exploring new territory, which piques curiosity about what the rest of the album will bring. As promised by Karen O in an interview in January, the songs previewed show signs of being more “tripped out” and “moody” than we’ve heard before, but we’re yet to hear the roots reggae influence.

Fans were pleased that the group didn’t neglect to play older tunes from all of their three albums. As concertgoers weren’t too versed in the new songs, it took the classic “Heads Will Roll” to get the crowd really dancing, who were otherwise enthusiastically watching the concert through their phones and tablets.

Other crowd favorites were “Maps” and “Date with the Night”, which were both played as an encore and augmented by the confetti and giant eyeball balloons being bounced around the crowd.

A decade on since they released their first album, the trio clearly still has it — the sharpness and stage presence with which the classics were performed and the experimentation heard in their new tracks prove the group really has aged well.

Although perhaps the garage punk band would be more suited to a poorly lit back-alley New York bar, EX Park did work as a venue. The parking lot, surrounded by skyscrapers, allowed for reasonably good acoustics and was well-organized as a festival venue.

The only criticism (albeit not much of one): the hour-and-a-half that the Yeah Yeah Yeahs played just didn’t seem long enough, the crowd chanting “we want more” well after they had left the stage. But fans will just have to patiently wait for more when Mosquito is officially released on April 16.