For some reason I was late on getting on the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s bandwagon.
I tend to have a thing against angry girl rock’n’roll, which I mistakenly took them to be. Like many people, it wasn’t until I heard their second album Show Your Bones that I really began to appreciate them.
It is an unusual move for a fairly well-established band to release a short five track EP after two successful full length albums (Fever To Tell and Show Your Bones). ISIS is a collection of previously unrecorded yet tried and true Yeah Yeah Yeah’s songs. Most of them are mainstays of their live show and were originally written in 2004 around the time their debut Fever to Tell was released.
Considering that, ISIS fits nice and neatly into any Yeah Yeah Yeah’s collection and will be a treat for fans that are lucky enough to have already heard these tracks as part of a live show.
The Yeah Yeah Yeah’s are a New York three-piece spearheaded by the idiosyncratic vocals and almost elusive persona of front woman Karen O. Karen’s ability to swing between very soft melodic singing to Patti Smith-like snarling and shouting is central to the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s sound.
She has to be one of the best female front women around at the moment. In fact YYY are truly one of the most refreshing rock’n’roll acts all round.
But it isn’t all Karen. The track “Down Boy” has such brilliant atmospheric and plodding drums and powerful guitar riffs reminiscent of their older tracks that I would compare The Yeah Yeah Yeah’s ability to the hair raising atmosphere of Muse. YYY go from just raw drums and a few perfectly placed “heys” from Karen at the beginning of “Rockers To Swallow” to unrelenting drums and guitar on “Kiss Kiss”.
If you are a YYY fan, ISIS will not disappoint, and if you are yet to give them a go, ISIS will definitely whet your appetite.