Karen O has a curious range. She possesses a low, clear, expressive voice that communicates tender-hearted vulnerability easily and evocatively. But she also effortlessly reaches upper registers of grotesquerie, brazenly barking and blasting wordless sounds at her audience. It's easy to take this range for granted or simply to disregard it as another element in O's high-fashion stage show, but it's a critical factor of her performance and identity. One style is tender and pretty, the other ugly and visceral. They're often considered the flipsides of the same complicated woman, but more likely they arise from the same confessional impulse: On "Maps", "Cheated Hearts", and "Turn Into" (the best songs she's written), she exposes her fears, needs, and insecurities in a straightforward and fairly conventional way, but on "Black Tongue", "Art Star", and "Tick", she turns herself inside out for her audience, showing her bones as well as her blood, guts, and organs.
O tends towards the latter-- in concentrated form-- on Is Is, an EP collecting newly recorded songs written in 2004 between their 2003 debut Fever to Tell and their 2006 follow-up, Show Your Bones. With its martial beat and start-stop momentum, opener "Rockers to Swallow" is full of empty, threatening spaces, which O half-fills with barked commands that sound alternately like Ozzy on "Crazy Train" and a maniacal drill sergeant. Nick Zinner and Brian Chase-- who have just as much range as their bandmate-- sound like they're playing against each other. It's a shoot-out, with the audience caught in the crossfire.
In fact, there's barely a song there. "Rockers to Swallow" is all performance. This is what they do best. Their self-titled debut and the follow-up Fever to Tell sounded like the band had cobbled the songs together from frayed scraps found in skuzzy alleyways, bars, dives, cheap walk-ups, and vacant lots-- in other words, from real experiences in New York-- which made them a compelling alternative to their club-bound peers. In contrast to Fever, Show Your Bones felt written, as if O deliberately sat down to put her feelings onto paper and the band booked studio time to turn those scribblings into songs.
Produced by Australian Nick Launay (who recorded Gang of Four, Killing Joke, and Public Image Ltd), Is Is stands somewhere between the two albums: It never feels as fully lived-in as Fever, but sounds looser and more off-the-cuff than Bones. Like "Rockers to Swallow", the title track is an elaboration of grunts and riffs, with O growling to the rafters in other buildings and Zinner's aggressive guitar spiraling psychedelically around Chase's high-hat-riding beat. But the remaining three tracks are songs in a more traditional sense-- and good ones at that. "Kiss Kiss" achieves a throbbing forward motion, with Zinner's guitar churning a bass riff that propels O's tense, terse vocal melodies and sexually conflicted lyrics.
Even when she's singing, she still punctuates her words with an arsenal of onomatopoeia: the girlish ah-ahs on "10x10" contrasting the wounded, nearly spoken intro; the yowls that precede the chorus on "Down Boy"; the throat-scraping growl on the title track. Each aspect of her stage identity finds equal expression on these songs, which only makes them sound more immediate and affecting. In fact, Is Is may be their most instantly accessible release, which is not a critical dig but just a way of saying it finds a good balance between alienating and inviting, between song and performance. This dynamic could sustain an entire album, but the EP's brevity is the key to its appeal: the Yeah Yeah Yeahs know enough to leave you wanting more.
