Album Review

Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Is Is (EP)

• 9th Aug 2007

Classic Yeah Yeah Yeahs straight from the start. Only five tracks but none of them are duffers, in fact ‘Down Boy’, ‘Kiss Kiss’ and ‘Isis’ could fit easily on either of their two albums proper.

Nick Zinner is quickly transforming himself into one of the best guitarists of his generation, his solos on ‘Down Boy’ are some of the most excitingly brief moments this year and they’re amazingly restrained, you so want them to carry on for another ten seconds or so but maybe it’s because they’re so short that they sound so good. This is a band that knows what it’s doing.
There’s no room for a ‘Maps’ or a ‘Cheated Hearts’ but that’s no bad thing, this is seventeen minutes of urgent, exciting and pretty damn awesome stuff.
Now if they’d just added another five or six tracks this could have been the classic third album…we’ll have to wait.