Back in 2003, the raucous hype afforded these New York art-punks’ debut release formed an inescapable chorus of retro-approval. How shocked we were to learn that once we got past the hubba-hubba baying of gentlemen rock journalists hopping Pepe Le Pew style toward front-lady Karen O’s ripped stockings, past the chin-stroking citations of Surfer Rosa and Rid Of Me, Fever To Tell would prove a badass contender, an impatient, frantic contagion of hurried rockabilly hooks and seductive shrieks and moans.
Show Your Bones sees the crew catch their breath in the less chaotic mid-tempo pop lane. Happily, we may now discover what Nick Zinner’s ornate guitar work actually sounds like when not condensed into the over-excited, if enjoyable twenty second spurts that characterised the first record. He still frequently plays like a one-man band, often forming his own rhythm section as he beats out hypnotic morse code beneath the impossibly catchy melodies of ‘Way Out’ and ‘Cheated Hearts’.
Karen O, meanwhile, is playing much harder to get. Where Fever To Tell saw her metamorphose from Chrissie Hynde with a lollipop into PJ Harvey’s cooing succubus coming at you with intent, (frequently on the same track - check out ‘Cold Light’ if you don’t believe me), this time out, she’s hipster Gidget, making the kooky, spiky rock album Sandra Dee never got around to. She’s softer, coyer, but enticingly eerie for all that. Listening to her she-wolf vocal on ‘Phenomena’ and the nursery song undercurrents in ‘Honeybear’, you get the strange sense that some Bad Seed little girl is relating fairytales warped by a distempered imagination.
Her sweeter banshee notes are emblematic of the newer, poppier Yeah Yeah Yeahs – now with added tambourines and firecracker tunes. You couldn’t say that all their stars are out just yet. There remains the idea that they’re being self-conscious. They certainly still wear their influences a little heavily (one listen had my companion reaching for his copy of Songs The Lord Taught Us). But come on in. The alchemy feels just right.