CRS
Chandler, Arizona, United States

There's an old saying. If you don't want someone to join a crowd, you ask them, "If everyone were jumping off of a cliff, would you?" Well, I have. So my answer would be "Yes". True story.
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Review of The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Show Your Bones

Thursday, June 08, 2006

this entry brought to you by the yeah yeah yeahs, "mysteries"





In 2003, the Yeah Yeah Yeah's debut LP, Fever to Tell was a breath of fresh air. Completely without pretension, the album had a steadfast mission: to have an immediate, urgent feeling of rocking, and though it wore its influences on its sleeves, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs seemed to pretend that you'd never heard rock n' roll before, and they were going to teach you how fun it could be. Karen O sings with a voice that seems to be more world-weary than she is letting on, like a woman who's seen more than she should for a gal her age, yet sings off-key, shrieks and growls like a caffienated high schooler at a rock n' roll pep rally (check out "Way Out" on Bones, a driving, head-bopping song with O shouting "Fits around me so tight!")The back-to-basics approach worked really well, and The Yeah Yeah Yeahs felt like everybody's new favorite band.

Show Your Bones is a bit different. It feels more calculated than Fever, doesn't feel as much like a happy accident. It's more deliberate. Karen reveals that she has more to say than what essentially came down to hooky sloganeering from the first album, which had songs mostly with few lyrics outside the chorus. The songs themselves feel much more thought-out, fleshy. The production by Squeak E. Clean is minimalist like before, yet filled with interesting textures and weird, sparse keyboard sounds (and occasionally a bass guitar!). The songs are definitely still riff-based, but often have multiple directions that they take beyond the same riff repeating until the chorus as on Fever. Guitarist Nick Zinner, never exactly a guitar god, has always had a keen ear to body-moving rhythm, and here he seems to have honed it to a fine craft (check out the triumphant, rocking "Phenomena" and "Fancy"). Without trying to depart too far from the sound that made his band famous, Zinner has markedly wizened and improved. Ditto for drummer Brian Chase, though his Dave Grohl Jr sound that fiercely punctuated the debut gets a bit lost in the mix here, but his style has adapted along with the songwriting into a maturity that knows precisely when to cut loose and when to hold back.

The problem the Yeah Yeah Yeahs now face, if indeed there is a problem, is that their sound, once completely unique and in a class of its own, has now moved further into art-rock-with-female lead category along with bands like The Kills, Giant Drag, and Tegan and Sara. In fact, upon first listen, the lead single "Gold Lion" sounds more than passingly like Tegan and Sara decided to finally rock the hell out because of its multi-tracked vocals and folky, acoustic opening. This is not necessarily a bad thing-- if the Yeah Yeah Yeahs find themselves in the art-rock crowd, they are definitely in the top tier, because Show Your Bones is a exceedingly good record-- they just aren't quite as unique and without peer as previously.
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 on this day last year another random thought, this time about announcer-voice people. amusing, but nothing to write home about.
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with love from CRS @ 7:16 PM 

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