Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs: Show Your Bones
Shifting gears, I turn to my most eagerly awaited album of the year, Show Your Bones by Yeah, Yeah Yeahs. Unlike the previous two selections, this album is built from the raw snarl of rock and roll. Often compared to other fierce female rockers—Patti Smith, Crissie Hynde, Siouxie et al.—Yeah’s frontwoman, Karen O, carves her way through these songs with distinction.
The Yeahs—consisting of O, guitarist/keyboardist Nicholas Zinner, and drummer Brian Chase—released their debut EP, Yeah, Yeah Yeahs, in 2001 as they toured with The Strokes and The White Stripes. In 2003, they released their first full-length album, Fever to Tell, which bristled with O’s intensity. “Maps”, the break-out single from that album is a mesmerizing study in desire. Building from blues, punk, and art-rock, Fever to Tell is one of the best albums of the 21st century.
Show your Bones begins with “Gold Lion” (O has jokingly said that this is a concept album about her cat). The lyrics, as on most Yeahs songs, are a hash of enigmatic poetics: “Gold lion’s gonna tell me where the light is.... It was the height I threw, the weight, The shell was crushing you, I’ve been around a few.” But O somehow infuses them with meaning as she croons and howls her way through the song.
O’s nasal delivery gives all of these songs a slight sneering swagger, without falling into punk cliché. If she’s a bit toned down from Fever to Tell, it’s to the music’s benefit. Her singing is more focused, more controlled. Every song is such a well-composed vignette, that it is hard to pick a stand-out. “Turn Into,” the track that closes the album, is perhaps the most transcendent, musically and lyrically. From a simple, acoustic beginning, it builds with orchestral chimes and synthesizer to the most coherent koan of the album, “I know, what I know I know. Ah yes.”
Because I have been focusing on women in this column [This review was published in the June 2006 Voice under the title "Musaic: Inspired Women"], I’ve given short shrift to O’s bandmates, Zinner and Chase.” O doesn’t carry this band. Her larger-than-life persona would be lost without Zinner’s musicianship and the thumping heartbeat of Chase’s drums. Chase thrashes his cymbals and high-hat as much as he beats on the drumheads, creating an ideal soundscape for O’s voice and attitude.
This album goes beyond the promise of the Fever to Tell album. Like so many great acts, the Yeahs remind the listener how much energy can be generated with a guitar, a drum kit, and the right singer. That’s the beauty of rock and roll.
Unlike the women in the previous reviews, O’s voice reveals no musical training. But one of the appeals of rock and roll is its ability to transforms mortals into gods. O, and the rest of the Yeahs, make that transition here.
In “Cheated Hearts” O chants, “Sometimes I think that I’m bigger than the sound.” She is that.
—Eric Bond