This was published 5 years ago
Karen O: I hope I gave young women licence to escape societal conventions
By Neha Kale
Karen Orzolek has always taken solace in saying precisely what she feels. Orzolek, 40, is among a handful of musicians whose alias, Karen O, has become shorthand for a certain creative vision. Namely, the kind that shatters the pressures to be ladylike with performances that exist on another sonic plane – one that delivers electrifying vocals that smack audiences out of their apathy while whirling around in torn fishnets, neon capes and smudged lipstick. She tells me that her on-stage persona has been a gift.
"Self-expression has always been the way towards speaking my truth," smiles Orzolek, who's about to release Lux Prima, a collaborative album with Danger Mouse (Brian Burton), the legendary producer who's worked with everyone from the Black Keys to Beck.
Karen O and Danger Mouse: "We threw ourselves in the deep end"
"I'm quite reserved. I'm shy. I have trouble with silly things – all the stuff regular people are better at. But for some reason, I was given an outlet where I could express myself and connect emotionally to things such as heartbreak, lust, unbridled joy. And be completely unapologetic about it."
It's been nearly 20 years since the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the band that, along with the the Strokes and the White Stripes, shaped the post-punk movement that defined early noughties New York City – and made Orzolek one of the most influential frontwomen of her generation.
Persona brings power: Karen O on stage with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs in 2007.Credit: JEFF CHRISTENSEN
Some of this scene's masculine posturing can seem a little retro by 2019 standards. But Orzolek, hailed by the music critic Lizzy Goodman as the world's first postfeminist rock star, has always fearlessly embraced contradictions while experimenting with forms such as movies, theatre and fashion.
Her shapeshifting artistic identity – the vulnerable lover in Maps, the 2003 single whose plaintive opening chords can still spark emotional time travel, the up-all-night hedonist in Heads Will Roll, the much-loved 2009 synth-pop anthem – anticipated the ways music and visual culture would bleed together, helped along by the forces of social media. It also set the stage for a wave of female artists such as Grimes, Lady Gaga and M.I.A.
"It's been a rocky path because I didn't have much of a guidebook, but I look at pictures of me in my 20s and I'm sweaty, I'm red and my make-up is smeared," Orzolek says, adding that becoming a mother in her late 30s has been "deeply valuable" in terms of resetting her ego and inviting an uncertainty that's expanded her artistic self. "But although I got lost in the process a bit, I tried to get rid of all societal conventions and it hopefully gave young women licence to do the same."
Orzolek, who was born in Seoul to a South Korean mother and Polish father, grew up in New Jersey and studied film at Ohio's Oberlin College, says that subverting the rules of self-presentation has always been part of her creative instinct.
"Even during the early days of the band, I knew persona was important, the costumes were important and the mystery around that was important," says Orzolek, who punctuates her sentences with an endearingly girlish laugh. "I wanted to have the whole package. It's always been about music and storytelling. Everything I've done is in that vein."
In the last decade, Orzolek has attracted a Grammy nomination for creating the score for Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are, directed by her ex-partner Spike Jonze. She masterminded Stop the Virgens, an ethereal "psycho-opera" that showed in Sydney at the 2012 edition of Vivid. She's worked on a short film for Japanese fashion designer Kenzo. But Lux Prima tells a new story for a new kind of moment – one in which listeners are more likely to look for an authentic connection with music on Spotify than in a Brooklyn dive bar and the conversation around women's bodies has reached fever pitch.
The atmospheric album reads like a soundscape of female emotion. Orzolek's voice – a multi-layered instrument – plays breathy and quiet on songs such as Ministry and Turn the Light and gathers tornado force on the anthemic Lux Prima and Woman, before splintering over Burton's soulful production into her signature howls and shrieks.
"I consider Brian to be one of the great contemporary producers of my time – he's interested in the big picture and wants to paint a masterpiece, it's not just like 'let's make a hit'," offers Orzolek, who says that the pair have considered collaborating since they met in 2007 through mutual friends.
There are some people that when they sing, you just believe them.
Danger Mouse
"It was really about getting the opportunity to work without the expectation of our peers or our labels. The first track, Lux Prima is the longest song I've ever written but Ministry is special because it got me through some of the tough political stuff I was facing as a woman. It's a comforting song in a way."
"We threw ourselves in the deep end – we would just go into the studio and start talking, writing songs and recording ideas," adds Burton, 41, a long-time Yeah Yeah Yeahs fan who became intrigued when Orzolek sent him a demo featuring Korean love songs she made as part of a side project in 2008.
"Karen is a great poetic writer and has a certain way of interpreting what she hears musically, that anything I do is going to sound better." He pauses for a moment and when he resumes speaking he acquires a quiet intensity. "There are some people that when they sing, you just believe them."
Lux Prima is out now, via BMG.