Show Your Bones

For the faint of heart, there's an awful lot that's off-putting about this affirmative, jerky threesome. At their most extreme, frontwoman Karen O bounds about like a spangly Tom and Jerry character, emitting a shrieking caw that boils your earwax from a block away. As Courtney Love once deadpanned (about herself, but the sentiment sticks), she is not a woman in rock, but a force of nature.
The ghost-like Nick Zinner and Brian Chase, meanwhile, are so achingly self-conscious that they've probably never knowingly cracked a fart joke. Along with the Spike Jonze connection (he directed their live DVD and is O's current squeeze), the patronage of high-concept designer Christian Joy and their boatload of side projects, the hokum of cool that hangs about them is as repellent as the steamy belch of a Noo Yoik sewer.

But, and it's a supersized pause here, they've got a inscrutable quality that makes them matter. Fever to Tell, their excellent 2003 debut, was a fierce explosion of jittering sexual energy and darkly romantic want that subdued all but the most cynical detractors. Their elusive essence can probably best be described as having - for want of a more delicate word - bollocks. Not in the moronic, unreconstructed cock-rock sense; more in the way they've got a granite-hard grasp of what they're about, while around them, twitchy indie rockers are not waving but drowning as they're swept along by the fashion riptide. This is a marvellous thing, since the whole Big Apple happening, which aided their jump-off six years ago, has died on its arse after a spate of disappointing releases from its best groups. Okay, group - the Strokes.

Show Your Bones, then, is testament to the wisdom of waiting until you're good and ready. For a band that arrived on a torrent of hulking riffs and wily shrieks, the difficulty lies in the yawning temptation to become heavier and more frenetic. Thankfully, Bones is neither a heated-up knock-off of Fever To Tell nor a fan-alienating abandonment of their signature sound. It is instead, a supremely confident 12-song cut that has a remarkable weightiness. If Fever To Tell was all straight lines and neon colours, its successor is fleshed out with shade and light.

For starters, O has toned down her trademark banshee mewl while producer Squeak E Clean (Spike Jonze's brother) and the mixing wizard Alan Moulder have added a measure of finesse. Opener 'Gold Lion' is sweetly languorous. 'Honey Bear' sounds not unlike the countrified offspring of Calamity Jane and a feminised Television, while the warm jangle of 'Cheated Hearts' has a gorgeous frailty that hints at but never matches the impact of tear-jerk classic 'Maps'. Lyrically it lacks the focus of Fever but the latter song, with its reflection on marriage and fidelity ('Now take these rings/ And stow them safe away') suggests that O has moved on from the lusty female lechery of old.

Guitarist Zinner is pivotal, summoning a dextrous palette that takes in everything from jagged R'n'B shuffles to sinuous metal squalls. In particular, his churning riffs override the dumb lyrical simplicity of 'Phenomena' and the tired melody of 'Mysteries', giving them with a pummelling titanium edge.

It closes with a casually intense clutch of tunes that are all the more affecting for their clean simplicity. The standout is 'Warrior' in which O, amid ethereal woos and sighs, still manages to exude a confident, cool female sexuality.
5 / 5 The Observer