Yeah Yeah Yeahs - "Show Your Bones"
(Interscope, 2006)
As far as the garage rock revival goes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs remain ahead of the curve. Led by Karen O, they've distanced themselves from the likes of the Strokes and the Vines by producing mature indie rock, album after album. Never content to stay in one place, the band's latest effort Show Your Bones continues to build on what worked on their sophomore album Fever to Tell while leaving plenty of room for both Karen O's vocals and the rest of the band's musicianship to shine.
"Phenomena" features hauntingly caustic vocals by O as the band plays blisteringly -- guitarist Nicholas Zinner and drummer Brian Chase produce such a great firewall of sound that it is as much a part of making the hook so brain-freezing as O's repeated "something like a phemonena ..." chorus. On "Honeybear," Chase puts four to the floor, but uses the four-four structure to keep shaking up the song ... an added beat in an unusual place suddenly sends the entire song structure reeling, which allows the band to take a song with few chords and turn verses and chorus into distinct entities.
The band sounds even more comfortable on "Warrior," on which acoustic guitar and bongo drums (and what sounds like mildly distorted piano chords) provide an oddly elegant backdrop for vocals that show O's ability to be effective even without heavy guitar to back her. "A little space is good," said Chase in a recent Rolling Stone interview -- and while he was referring to band members not seeing each other constantly, this rings true in the band's music as well. Each member knows when to give the others space.
On "Dudley," one of the best tracks on the album, the band itself comes to the forefront as O channels Sleater-Kinney with her suprisingly restrained vocals. While Karen O's over-the-top persona has proven to be successful in the past, it's nice to see she's capable of reigning it in when the song demands it. This also suggests Yeah Yeah Yeahs have the chops to keep evolving in a genre that eats most bands alive by this point in a career.
In the end, Show Your Bones stands out as the best of the three albums Yeah Yeah Yeahs have produced in the last five years. For fans of solidly arranged and performed indie rock or punk, this is a must-own album. Show Your Bones stands up to repeated listens, suggesting that Karen O and company have left the rest of the pack far behind them.
As far as the garage rock revival goes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs remain ahead of the curve. Led by Karen O, they've distanced themselves from the likes of the Strokes and the Vines by producing mature indie rock, album after album. Never content to stay in one place, the band's latest effort Show Your Bones continues to build on what worked on their sophomore album Fever to Tell while leaving plenty of room for both Karen O's vocals and the rest of the band's musicianship to shine.
"Phenomena" features hauntingly caustic vocals by O as the band plays blisteringly -- guitarist Nicholas Zinner and drummer Brian Chase produce such a great firewall of sound that it is as much a part of making the hook so brain-freezing as O's repeated "something like a phemonena ..." chorus. On "Honeybear," Chase puts four to the floor, but uses the four-four structure to keep shaking up the song ... an added beat in an unusual place suddenly sends the entire song structure reeling, which allows the band to take a song with few chords and turn verses and chorus into distinct entities.
The band sounds even more comfortable on "Warrior," on which acoustic guitar and bongo drums (and what sounds like mildly distorted piano chords) provide an oddly elegant backdrop for vocals that show O's ability to be effective even without heavy guitar to back her. "A little space is good," said Chase in a recent Rolling Stone interview -- and while he was referring to band members not seeing each other constantly, this rings true in the band's music as well. Each member knows when to give the others space.
On "Dudley," one of the best tracks on the album, the band itself comes to the forefront as O channels Sleater-Kinney with her suprisingly restrained vocals. While Karen O's over-the-top persona has proven to be successful in the past, it's nice to see she's capable of reigning it in when the song demands it. This also suggests Yeah Yeah Yeahs have the chops to keep evolving in a genre that eats most bands alive by this point in a career.
In the end, Show Your Bones stands out as the best of the three albums Yeah Yeah Yeahs have produced in the last five years. For fans of solidly arranged and performed indie rock or punk, this is a must-own album. Show Your Bones stands up to repeated listens, suggesting that Karen O and company have left the rest of the pack far behind them.
posted by Jonathan Sanders @ 12:32 AM
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