Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Is Is EP (Dress Up / Polydor)
4/5
By: Michael Cragg
When the Yeah Yeah Yeahs first arrived in 2001 with their debut, self-titled EP, few would have predicted they'd still be making music in 2007, let alone music as good as this. Whilst contemporaries like The Strokes and The Vines struggled to match the potential of their debuts, and with pretenders like The Bravery and The Hives falling by the wayside, one could have been forgiven for predicting a similar fate for Karen O and co. Unashamedly riding the wave of cool New York bands that crashed onto our shores post- 'Is This It', the Yeah Yeah Yeahs appeared almost too good to be true, an art rock trio with a front woman who combined the visceral thrill of Courtney Love with the eccentricities of Bjork. The music press lapped it up and soon Karen O's face adorned the pages of every style magazine and broadsheet supplement, despite her band having only a five track EP to their name. Luckily, said EP included the classic 'Bang', a thrilling three minutes of spiky, angular guitar, with Karen O lasciviously taunting, "As a f**k son you suck". Due to the distorted nature of the vocal however, they still managed to get it played on daytime radio. Genius.
Debut album 'Fever To Tell' was released in 2003 and spawned three hit singles, including the beautiful, emotionally bruised 'Maps', a song that helped the band transcend the one dimensional fare of the rest of the New York scene. 'Maps' also displayed a different side to Karen O, who sang each word with an emotional clarity at odds with the guttural yelps and screams used on tracks like 'Pin' and 'Art Star'. It also signalled a slight musical shift for eventual follow-up 'Show Your Bones', which saw the band adding layers of keyboards and acoustic guitar to their sound. Nominated for a Grammy and finishing 2006 near the top of every magazine's end of year lists, it did exactly what a good second album should by building on its predecessor, without sacrificing the band's identity.
This makes 'Is Is' a bit of a curious listen in terms of its musical direction. At first it sounds strikingly similar to the songs on 'Fever To Tell', with Nick Zinner's guitar dominating the mix. '10 x 10' in particular features that familiar Yeah Yeah Yeahs' sound, as if Zinner's guitar is tuned to sound like a fire alarm, all high-pitched and insistent. But as regressions go, it's a brilliant exercise in re-treading your steps, as if they need to go back before they could go forward. Opener 'Rockers To Swallow' isn't really a song as such, more the sound of all out war between drummer and guitarist with the singer holding her own somewhere in the middle. Over a marshal drum pattern, Zinner's guitar chugs menacingly and you can picture Karen O strutting around, singing abstract lines such as "Tell me what rockers to swallow/ Tell me what knockers to bite".
Throughout 'Is Is' Karen O uses her voice to devastating effect, whether it's grunting her way through 'Rockers To Swallow' or singing sweetly at the beginning of 'Down Boy'. As the latter starts up, her voice echoes softly, and for a moment you feel another 'Maps' or 'Turn Into' developing, but the peace is shattered by a brilliantly off-kilter guitar riff that lurches up from nowhere to thrilling effect. Such moments of brilliance are all over these eighteen minutes of music, not least on the catchy 'Kiss Kiss' when the chorus kicks in for the first time, or at the end of '10 x 10' when the drums are joined by processed hand-claps.
Such high quality is marred slightly by The Velvet Underground-esque title track, which is good but lacks some of the spark compared to the other four tracks. Still, it's not a bad return for your £4, and if this is them clearing out their musical closet- some of these songs date back to the 'Fever To Tell' sessions- then it will be fascinating to see where they go next.
Stream the video to '10x10' exclusively on Rockfeedback HERE.
Artists in this article: Yeah Yeah Yeahs
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