Swimming With the Mainstream

I did something I don't usually do: I just read reviews of the album I'm supposed to be writing about. And, frankly, I'm disgusted. Every single review of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' sophomore album, Show Your Bones, is filled with the same ambiguous language: terms like "accessible" or "easy," and vague comparisons to Fever to Tell, their first full-length album-all tricks used to avoid giving an opinion. What's worse is that since I first heard this album, I've used the exact same tricks while discussing it. Reading those reviews just made me realize how sick of passive criticism I am. So here goes, in as plain of terms as I can find: Show Your Bones is a good-not a great-album that is a pleasure to listen to from beginning to end.

It is good because each song goes through a huge range of dynamics; because guitarist Nick Zinner can go from a sweet acoustic melody to an intense, squealing riff so smoothly; because Karen O has learned how to harness her yelp and play with a new range, going from the rhythmic shouts of "Honeybear" to what sounds amazingly like actual singing on the bittersweet "Turn Into"; because each song is simultaneously melodic, catchy, abrasive, and interesting (see the rocking wordplay of "Phenomena"). It is good because Karen O, Zinner, and drummer Brian Chase have figured out how to satisfy and communicate with an audience through the subtle interaction of their three parts (see especially the darker, slow-paced "Fancy" or what could be their next big hit, "Cheated Heart"). It is not great because playing with dynamics in each song leaves the album as a whole lacking in intensity. It is not great because each song is slightly too similar, and slightly too straightforward after a few listens.

I can only guess that this album won't get very many straightforward judgments because its release, and the band behind it, is too culturally loaded. This is a band that has gone from being the hippest of underground stars to the most overhyped, and, thanks to a gleefully out-of-character ballad, the most overexposed of that early-'00s New York scene. And yet the Yeah Yeah Yeahs have somehow retained every fan base they've picked up along the way. With very little backlash, the original supporters seem largely to have stuck around, right next to the TRL crowd. This leaves the people who have been there from the beginning (including many critics) the choice of giving up on a band they previously loved, or just sucking it up and dealing with the teeny-bopper, Clear Channel crowd that has inexplicably taken to the band as well.

As far as the band is concerned, they seem to have chosen their allegiance on Bones, and it is to the mainstream. The mainstream has already absorbed them, as Max Martin borrowed the dressings from "Maps" for the bridge he inserted into "Since U Been Gone." Karen O and company were smarter in their theft: they stole the substance and the essence of a pop-rock song and did what they wanted with it.

What people seem to be lamenting the loss of on this album are the extremes of Fever to Tell, the in-your-face attitude of Karen O on every track. That mentality is not gone, it has just shifted. The first album was hailed by so many for the sexuality, the energy, the noise-for the aesthetic that trumped the form. It was a challenge to the perceived norm, something this album is most definitely not. But, in signing to Interscope and in producing this album, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs took on a bigger challenge: how to make the music they want within a commercial, pop world. The result can be called accessible, or it can be called toned down. But it can also be called dynamic, rhythmic, catchy, interesting, fun. In short, it can be called a good album.