Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Show Your Bones (Interscope)
By Garin Pirnia
Published: April 11th, 2006 | 11:52am
When garage rock made a comeback in the early ’00s, the music industry became inundated with a myriad of promising youth-orientated bands. Since that epoch, most of those bands have succumbed to scrutiny and backlashes unable to sustain their reigns. Fortunately, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, grouped with the aforementioned movement, haven’t felt the rumbling dissonance.
2003’s Fever to Tell offered a coarse, art-punk record full of lead singer’s Karen O’s subversive, ear-piercing yelps. The breakthrough song, “Maps,” was the most disparate track off the CD demonstrating the group’s prowess for versatility. But Nick Zinner, Brian Chase, and Karen O are so much more than a one-hit wonder.
Show Your Bones isn’t Fever to Tell, which is a good thing. The band has found a way to structure their songs yet allowing for an occasional burst of bedlam and unpredictability to bleed in. “Gold Lion” kicks off the album with fierce pounding drums, and O’s gnarling vocals giving the listener a shot of adrenaline. “Way Out” begins with a strumming acoustic guitar, then transforms into a vociferous rock track. “Fancy” thrashes to a tribal beat and strident vocals, and the deft instrumentations in the classic rock-centric song, “Phenomena,” feints from Karen’s pronounced vocals. The marvel of Karen O is her vocal range: On one song she has a slight twang, on the next she switches to screaming her lungs out, and on another she’s whispering love’s lament.
The nougat of the album comes halfway through with the best track, “Cheated Hearts.” It begins instrumentally (like “Maps”) with a pulsating electro tinge, adds drums, then introduces O’s lilting voice as she sings in an unfeigned manner: “Now take these rings and stow them safe away / I’ll wear them on another day.” As the song progresses, the arrangements become bolder with O’s voice strengthening.
“Dudley” and “Warrior” continue the relationship themes sounding more melancholy than “Cheated Hearts” and are equally as effective. “Mysteries” is a rambling, fast-paced track on which Ms. O returns to her natural self by screaming the word “stress” repeatedly at the denouncement. The album ends with the impeccable “Turn Into,” a somewhat sentimental song bordering on alt-country: “Turn into the only thing that ever knows,” she sings trying to put a turbulent past behind her. For the first time, a melodic piano chimes in lifting the track to a new level. O sounds self-assured at the end, saying, “I know what I know.”
Karen O and company layer all their songs on Show Your Bones with a tremendous amount of subtext, concupiscence, and aggression procuring an exhilarating piece of art that shatters the typical formula most bands acquiesce.
Comments
Please login to be able to comment on this article.
more