Garage-rock? The Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ second album demonstrates that if this New York art-school trio were ever anything to do with the stripped-down, lo-fidelity rock ethic, it was strictly by coincidence. Rather, Show Your Bones marks this band out as true 21st Century new-wavers, their sound filled out with gleaming layers of guitar and a dynamic that bucks and coils with devious ambition under vocalist Karen O’s gasped, orgasmic yowl. True, like Fever To Tell, Shake Your Bones opens with a snarl and an surfeit of fiery rock-out gumption--see single "The Golden Mile" and "Phenomena", Karen chanting "Something like a phenomenon/You’re something like a phenomenon" over crunchy, distorted stomp. But gradually, the album softens to yield emotional secrets. "Cheating Hearts" commences with a triumphant Nick Zinner fanfare apparently cribbed straight from the Sex Pistols’ "Pretty Vacant", but blossoms out into a passionate love song that flits between swooning poignancy and elatory triumph, while the hushed "Warrior" belies Karen and Nick’s genesis as a singer-songwriter duo--at least until it rears into life like a rattlesnake, Karen letting loose gleeful kung-fu chops atop slices of choppy guitar. A second album that, far from feeling difficult, comes across as almost effortless in its excellence. --Louis Pattison