With their long-awaited second album, everybody's favourite indie icons have gone for a decidedly different sound. Grown-up? Introspective? Yeah Yeah Yeahs drummer Brian Chase tells Derek O'Connor about the fraught process of putting dem bones together
AH YES, that Difficult Second Album syndrome. A common malady, one proven time and again to bring musical journeys crashing to a sudden halt. That said, sometimes the eagerly anticipated (or less than eagerly anticipated) second album is where it all comes together, where the untrammelled potential of the imperfect debut finally pays off in spades. For every Modern Life Is Rubbish or Paul's Boutique you'll find at least half a dozen Room on Fires or Second Comings. It's a bridge every artist has to cross - well, unless you're The La's.
This week's contenders are Yeah Yeah Yeahs, a trio of New York art-rockers who rocketed to something resembling indie-superduperstardom courtesy of an acclaimed, self-titled EP, a killer live reputation, a decent 2003 debut album (Fever to Tell) and an instantly iconic frontwoman in the divine Karen Orzolek, aka Karen O. YYY's kinetic brand of glammed-up garage-rock won them a legion of admirers and gave us indie karaoke fave Maps, one of the great alt.rock power ballads of recent years.
Three years on, the new Yeah Yeah Yeahs record is an event, which means that (a) the record company won't trust you with a copy of it ahead of the release date, and (b) we're not getting near Karen O, now a bona fide fashion icon and former half of the hippest celeb couple on the planet (she went out with Spike Jonze after he broke up with Sofia Coppola).
Brian Chase, on the other hand, is more than happy to talk about Show Your Bones. He's the drummer, so he doesn't necessarily feel the need to over-elaborate. Then there's the record itself: a slow burning slice of panoramic melancholia that, by and large, eschews the manic pop thrills of Fever to Tell in favour of, you know, grown-up songs. It is, in other words, yer textbook Difficult Second Album.
"We have a lot invested in each other," says Chase, "and there are some bonds there that go pretty deep - it's definitely not a casual relationship. That's at the root of everything we do. As a result, there are times that we're getting along better than others."
One crucial factor defined the creation of Show Your Bones. Whereas Yeah Yeah Yeahs had previously been a quintessential New York band (they formed in hipster Brooklyn paradise Williamsburg), Karen O abandoned the east coast for a new life in Los Angeles. So Chase and guitarist Nick Zinner had to get used to the commute.
"It's hard to place the impact that it had on the record. Nick and I would fly to LA and we'd work for a week or two on writing the songs with Karen. Then we'd leave, and few more weeks would pass, and the process would begin again, so that forced the songs to develop over several months, as opposed to spontaneously. It kind of forced a continual revision of all the material."
Seeking a fresh angle on the material, they brought in relatively inexperienced producer Squeak E Clean, who had worked with Karen O on a solo project (and just happens to be Spike Jonze's brother - those wacky Siegel kids and their crazy ailiases). Fever to Tell mixer Alan Moulder came along for the ride. Slowly, surely and rather painstakingly, the record came together.
"It was difficult at first," says Chase, who errs on the side of utmost diplomacy at all times. "Especially when we started, because the songs were only partially finished, and there were still a lot of question marks looming about - we just had to keep plugging away at it until we felt good with each song, and with each other, and ready to lay it down."
At first, Show Your Bones might come as a bit of a shock to fans of such Fever to Tell standouts as Y Control, Pin and Date with the Night. For a start, Karen O has forsaken her trademark incendiary yelp for her "proper" singing voice. The songs here are somewhat panoramic in scope and execution, perfectly encapsulated by acoustically driven first single Gold Lion (and its suitably apocalyptic, gloriously OTT promo video). Tracks such as Fancy, Phenomena and Warrior Scream apparently embrace a vibe that might best be dubbed "melancholic stadium rock". The strangest thing of all is that, for the most part, it does the trick rather nicely.
Chase remains somewhat elusive when it's suggested that the introspective, sombre nature of Show Your Bones might have been influenced by its protracted gestation period. "It's hard to place where that feeling came from. There must have been something in the mood during those few months that we were working on the record. Fever to Tell definitely comes out of that more celebratory nightlife culture - but this one's more focused on the three of us as, ah, individuals. Sort of like the aftermath of the celebration, maybe."
Both Zimmer and Chase have been largely content to let Orzolek enjoy the lion's share of the attention when it came to the blinding media hype surrounding the band during their ascendancy, a period that saw them open live for both The Strokes and The White Stripes. Still, their musical contributions remain utterly essential to the band's success.
Both have kept busy with any number of other projects. Zimmer plays regularly with voice-of-his-generation Conor "Bright Eyes" Oberst and collaborated with Oberst on his bizarro electro-goth Digital Ash in a Digital Urn. Multi-instrumentalist Chase is about to release a new record with his other band, out-there no-wave minimalists Seconds. That's when he's not playing with avant-garde artists Ikue Mori and Tyondai Braxton, or studying the tables and the musical theories of composer Lamont Young (a twin obsession), or offering drum lessons to local kids for kicks.
How does this all tally with Chase's YYY duties, especially when he's looking ahead to a year on the road in support of their "breakthrough" record?
"It eats into the time I have for other projects, but the Yeah Yeah Yeahs is a very special thing to me, and if it means sacrificing other things, then that's okay. When I play with this band, I just lock into a place where I forget about my influences, and about theory and concepts, and the music just happens. That stuff is part of my personality, and always will be, but with Yeah Yeah Yeahs I go into a less . . . conscious place."
Expectations are sky high for Show Your Bones. Yeah Yeah Yeahs have the major label clout, accompanied by a rake of prominent summer festival slots across the globe, and an ever-expanding fanbase that saw Fever to Tell go gold on both sides of the Atlantic. Earlier this year, The Strokes gave their particular cachet of cool a similar hard sell, with mixed results both artistically and commercially. Can Yeah Yeah Yeahs go the distance?
"It's about making a good record," states Chase. "But yeah, we're all feeling a pressure. An internal pressure - our manager has always done a good job of keeping the label out of the recording process. In our minds, we knew that this was going to be a high-profile record, and the weight of that reared its head in places. The most important thing is that we still trust each other, we respect each other's approach and opinions. There's a lot of give and take.
"It's always difficult when you're with people who feel passionately, in very different ways, about the same thing."
Show Your Bones is on release now. Single Gold Lion is reviewed on page 14
