Karen O, Nick Zinner and Brian Chase are three good rock ’n’ roll names; they’re the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, another good rock ’n’ roll name. They are from New York, and in this age of the fractured take on the classic rock line-up, they make up a vocals–guitar–drums combo. It’s a hollow sound, giving each member room to scratch and howl their way around a downtown vision of garage rock. Show Your Bones, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ second album, comes a full three years on from the successful debut Fever to Tell, a recording that they stridently declared they have no intention of repeating.

For those high on the band’s early recorded work, Fever to Tell was somewhat disappointing. In one of the most bizarre album sequencings ever, the three best songs were positioned last. The first eight appeared to be the band’s clearout of a backlog of spidery garage-rock numbers. There were some good tracks – ‘Rich‘ and ‘Date with the Night‘ – but as an opening salvo, it was strangely one-dimensional in light of the first EP. But ‘Maps’, the first of the album’s final three songs, was something else altogether. The band’s members have said, half jokingly, that they made Fever to Tell just to get this song down. ‘Maps’ is special; it’s like a great early Pretenders single. Splintered, icy guitar lines from Zinner, and Karen O dropping the grunge and cooing, “Oh say, say, say, wait, they don’t love you like I love you”: it’s a tender, dreamy stretch of a pop song. The last two tracks, ‘Y Control’ and ‘Modern Romance’ (plus a hidden song), followed the lead of ‘Maps’, taking the gothic-garage sound, slowing it and shooting it into post-punk territory. The verdict: this was a group to watch, one that either didn’t know its own strengths or was hip to the perversity of skewing expectations.