The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, 'Zero' from It's Blitz (2009)
I don't really listen to that many indie rock bands, on the world scale, although from listening to the radio I'm probably more familiar with them than most other people with my otherwise obscure tastes in music. Of the handful of indie bands that I do end up really liking (the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Editors, Foals, Vampire Weekend...) it's usually because there's something in their music that I identify with, punk rock- or (specific) postpunk-wise. Not that they are punk bands, or the second coming of the Clash, or anything like that, but that they're interesting enough that I can spend time with them, absorb their music, as I would with the more solidly punk or hardcore sides of my music collection.
Of course, 'interesting enough' also just means something subjective and quality-wise - as Louis Armstrong said, there are no genres of music inasmuch as they all collapse down to 'good' and 'bad' music.
Which is all a roundabout way of saying that this a pretty good video, and sorta punk rock too (you could imagine the Ramones making it). 1980s New York new wave rock at its finest.
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Show Your Bones is my fifth favourite album of 2006 (the order isn't particularly important). I first started listening to it in mid-2007, and bought the LP in early 2008, a week before I got my turntable. The LP has a couple of differences, some might say advantages, from the CD version: it is a track shorter (no 'Deja Vú') and the printed cover (below) is unadorned by text or title. The first is an advantage because, at 12 tracks, the CD drags on a little to long with Show Your Bones's somewhat undifferentiated indie rock; the second because, well, the cover picture is stylishly and strikingly awesome.
As for the music itself, 'Gold Lion' is undeniably the best song on the album, but the rest of the tracks are all pretty great. It's the rhythm and the heaviness to Show Your Bones that makes me like it so much - it's clever and affecting rock'n'roll, energetic indie rock played with both skill and fireworks. Plus, Karen O's often versatile, often unrestrained vocals are probably the best thing to come out of rock music this decade.
Hardcore for Nerds: Friday Video [#1] - The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, 'Gold Lion'
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