THE CD: “Show Your Bones” (Interscope)
PERFORMER: Yeah Yeah Yeahs
WEBSITE: Click here.
SUGGESTED TRACKS: “Cheated Hearts,” “Way Out,” “Phenomena,” “Gold Lion”
YOU’LL LIKE IT IF…: NYC art-house ballads with gnashing claws and teeth get your blood flowing.

Channeling the voice of a jilted lover on the song “Mysteries,” Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ singer Karen O., in her horny-nymph squeal, belts out over a hyper riff: “I don’t even know what it’s like not to go back to you.”

That’s more or less how I feel about the New York-based trio’s latest effort, “Show Your Bones.” No matter how many CDs I have floating around the car or teetering in boxless stacks on the dresser, I pop in this aural speedball (as in John Belushi, not Nolan Ryan). “Bones” lulls the listener into a happy stupor with tracks tantalizingly familiar to some really good pop song we can almost remember, then punches with the maniacal, shout-and-thrash garage-rock that fueled the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ 2003 album, “Fever to Tell.”

The dance-club grind of “Phenomena” drips of Gwen Stefani, with a few “Rock your body, y’all”s thrown in for effect. Seconds later, guitarist Nick Zinner whips out wild bends and vibrattos to a backdrop of blaring car alarms. Karen follows up with a ghostly moan. How very Eels.

An effective formula overall, but it comes of as half-cocked at times. One minute, the band curls up in the prickly blanket of UV-lit-basement metal on “Fancy” only to later connect with its inner-Sheryl Crow for the acoustic “The Sweets.”

What kind of album is this anyway?

A cynic could say the Yeah Yeah Yeahs saw the public’s fleeting infatuation with every band with “The” in front of its name, and spiked successful formulas with their own sound to play it safe without selling out.

Evidence: “Gold Lion,” although a good song, jumps on the making-noise-as-a-chorus train with veteran passengers Blur and Third Eye Blind. The Nena-esque “Cheated Hearts” smacks of the ’80s-pop resurgence headed by Franz Ferdinand and others.

But the Yeah Yeah Yeahs pump out enough attitude, distortion and screeching (not to mention super sexy) vocals to plant their own flag on familiar territory.

–by Morgan Kelly

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 4th, 2006 at 1:33 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.