For a group that bursts with fleeting pleasures, Yeah Yeah Yeahs doesn't inspire much patience on the Is Is EP; instead, it rewards it with frustrating hints. "Rockers To Swallow" is a reminder that the band is comfortable lurking in abstract grooves—even if the song also cycles back to the usual theatrics of Karen O and guitarist Nick Zinner. In a sound that's always been deceptively broad, the fragments that should sound fresh get obscured. The disc's most fulfilling song gets most of its pleasure from the past—"10 X 10" catches some of the lonesome chill the band mastered with "Maps" and "Pin" on 2003's Fever To Tell. Like all the tracks here, it expands Yeah Yeah Yeahs' territory, then hesitates to charge into it.
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