Yeah Yeah Yeahs have slowly moved away from their jaunty New York punk roots into the foggier realm of even-Steven indie. One hesitates to call their gradual genre shift a reinvention. It's more like a dragging take on their old sound.
The tracks are simply less incisive than those of the "Master" EP and "Fever to Tell," which featured "Maps," the track that brought them into Middle America's living room. Most of "Fever to Tell" drew blood with sharp guitar hooks and biting writing. "Show Your Bones," despite the title, feels like a collection of attempts to reproduce the easier-listening aesthetic of "Maps." It's an easy thing to accuse a group of trying to recreate a hit. Wouldn't say it, though, if it didn't seem true.
Singer Karen O hardly roars through the speakers, but mews, which hardly seems appropriate for the single, "Gold Lion." When she does employ her old vocal burn, it's less convincing than on older tracks like "Art Star."
Also notably absent are the acerbic and often ironic lyrics that normally make listening to her sing worthwhile.
"Mysteries" actually sounds like a rockabilly tune Johnny Cash could have written, until the clumsily tacked-on crescendo ending. It is in this song especially that Yeah Yeah Yeahs sound like Sons and Daughters, one of the leaders in the mid-tempo rock movement into which they've merged.
There are exciting moments when the group's minimalist approach works as well for them as it does for anyone, including The White Stripes, such as the bridge of "Way Out," but the moments don't last.
The album's best track, "Phenomena," relies the thick, single-string guitar melodies that are normally the second-best facet of the group, after Karen O. Strangely, the chorus mimics a 1997 L.L. Cool J song, "Phenomenon."
"Something like a phenomena, babe/ You're something like a phenomena," sings Karen O, while L.L. said, "Something like a phenomenon." A play on subject/verb agreement? It's hard to figure what she's getting at here, but the chorus has a stiffer pulse than anything else on the record.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs may function better writing in EPs. This seems the product of a group pressured to crank out a full-length as a timely follow-up to what was a collection of re-recorded EP material, like "Fever to Tell."
