Product Description

Second full length album from New York garage-rock trio theYeah Yeah Yeahs. This is the follow-up to 2003's criticallyacclaimed 'Fever To Tell'. Produced by Squeak E Clean, the album sees the band develop their alternative rock sound, emphasising this time on heavier drums while lead-singer, Karen O, supplies her trademark intense vocals. The single 'GoldLion' is included.

Track Listing

1. Gold Lion
2. Way Out
3. Fancy
4. Phenomena
5. Honeybear
6. Cheated Hearts
7. Dudley
8. Mysteries
9. The Sweets
10. Warrior
11. Turn Into
12. Deja Vu

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3259 in Music
• Released on: 2006-03-27
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 42 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Garage-rock? The Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ second album demonstrates that if this New York art-school trio were ever anything to do with the stripped-down, lo-fidelity rock ethic, it was strictly by coincidence. Rather, Show Your Bones marks this band out as true 21st Century new-wavers, their sound filled out with gleaming layers of guitar and a dynamic that bucks and coils with devious ambition under vocalist Karen O’s gasped, orgasmic yowl.

True, like Fever To Tell, Shake Your Bones opens with a snarl and an surfeit of fiery rock-out gumption--see single "The Golden Mile" and "Phenomena", Karen chanting "Something like a phenomenon/You’re something like a phenomenon" over crunchy, distorted stomp. But gradually, the album softens to yield emotional secrets. "Cheating Hearts" commences with a triumphant Nick Zinner fanfare apparently cribbed straight from the Sex Pistols’ "Pretty Vacant", but blossoms out into a passionate love song that flits between swooning poignancy and elatory triumph, while the hushed "Warrior" belies Karen and Nick’s genesis as a singer-songwriter duo--at least until it rears into life like a rattlesnake, Karen letting loose gleeful kung-fu chops atop slices of choppy guitar. A second album that, far from feeling difficult, comes across as almost effortless in its excellence. --Louis Pattison

Customer Reviews

Amazing!!!
This was the first album I bought by the "Yeah Yeah Yeahs". It is a great album with a difined mixture between the tracks. Some are full of energy and others are very emotional. All in all it is a great album and covinced me to buy the other albums of thiers.

Horribly disappointing second album
OK, so I'll get dozens of people clicking the "unhelpful vote" button, but hear me out!

I loved this band when they started out. I thought they were the most exciting US indie band to emerge in a long long time, BUT...the bottom line is this - this album is simply nowhere near as good as the debut "Master" EP or the "Fever To Tell" album. It just isn't.

In fact, it hardly even sounds like the same band (with the possible exceptions of "Gold Lion" and "Cheated Hearts"). Other than that, it all sounds very very samey and desperately uninispired. If people want to misinterpret that as "development" or "maturity", then fine. What "Show Your Bones" certainly is not, is exciting. Which is what I thought this band were all about.

Growing Old Gracefully
"Fever to Tell" was a raw, rowdy, and rambunctious album that demanded your attention. It was an album of manical drumming, booming reverb, and lead vocals that shrieked and shrilled. Ironically, although not irrelevant to this review, its most accessible song "Maps" would prove to be the one that guided the album into the charted waters of popular acclaim.

Why is this relevant? Because The YYYs second full-length album, "Show Your Bones", is a much more mature and structured effort. O's vocals are stripped back, Chase's drumming is kept in check, and Zinner's guitar-playing sticks to the script. So the band's gone and grown up - time to consign them to the footnotes of early 21st century music? Far from it! This is a sophomore album that will give the band much wider appeal, but should keep many earlier fans tuned into what they have to offer.

You could argue that "Maps" provides the bridge between the two albums. However, from the acoustic and gently sung opening bars of "Gold Lion", listeners know that they are in for something new here. The title of the song is a reference to the Gold Prize for Best Use of Music at the Cannes Lions Advertising Festival, which an Adidas television commercial featuring "Hello Tomorrow," written by Show Your Bones co-producer Squeak E. Clean, with vocals by O, won in 2005. Indeed, the opening lines of this song perhaps suggest some anguish at the loss of indie credibility that such mainstream success may bring:

Gold lion's gonna tell me where the light is, \
Gold lion's gonna tell me where the light is, \
Take our hands out of control, \
Take our hands out of control.

The Pixies are a pervasive influence on the album and fans of Kim Deal's singing will feel very nostalgic when listening to "Way Out" - just listen to how O sings the line "The face ain't making what the mouth needs"!

The other standout song on the album is "Cheated Heart". It has a good hook that O's vocals dance over nicely and the refrain of "I think that I'm bigger than the sound" is instantly recognisable. The song itself appears to be about a relationship about to take a "time out", with the suggestion that both may have a bit on the side. Great if you can get it, I always maintain!

Another track that catches the attenion lyrically is "Warrior", which appears to be about the hardship of being a band on the road, trying to live up to expectations:

Trouble at home \
Travel the way you say \
"The road don't like me" \
Travel it all, travel it all away \
"The road's gonna get on me" \
And I'm small \
The road's gonna get on me \
Well if it gets it all \
The road's gonna end on me

Other tunes well worth hearing are "Honeybear", "Dudley", and "Turn Into". However, a pleasing feature of this album is how different each song sounds from the rest and they all grow on you with a couple of listens.

Not a band that will necessarily write lyrics you then burn into your brain. However, this is an album that will survive frequent playing. If this is the YYYs gone mainstream, then welcome to the club.