Yeah Yeah Yeahs: It's Blitz!
Yeah Yeah Yeahs go all electro on It's Blitz!
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Tuesday, 14, Apr 2009 03:22
Polydor Records, out now.
In a nutshell.
Difficult, daring, dreamy, disobedient and indelicate
What's it all about?
As with Yeah Yeah Yeahs first two albums - 2003's Fever To Tell and 2006's Show Your Bones - working out what exactly it is that they are trying to convey on It's Blitz! is about as easy as getting an intelligible sentence out of Glasvegas after a five day Buckfast bender. The threesome have always been reluctant to reveal much about even the subject matter behind what they do and their explanations, lyrics and artwork have always been cryptic at best.
The title and cover (The hand of singer Karen O crushing an egg) of It's Blitz! Would seem to indicate a theme of unruliness and wanton destruction, and songs such as the menacing Heads Will Roll and raucous Dull Life appear to bare this out. However, further listening reveals that It's Blitz is actually dominated by Yeah Yeah Yeahs seemingly most personal and vulnerable lyrics to date, from the "Love, don't go/Love, don't cry" refrain of Skeletons to the fear of loneliness that imbues Runaway.
Who's it by?
Never mind Vampire Weekend, MGMT, Chairlift and their faux-boho bollocks, Yeah Yeah Yeahs have been making New York's music scene cooler than having a ball pit room in your house since before Andrew VanWyngarden first began dressing like a Grateful Dead roadie.
Just to prove it, Karen O, elf-like guitarist Nick Zinner and librarian-like drummer Brian Chase made a better debut album than the coolest of their peers, the Strokes (oh stop crying, you know we're right) and, unlike the career-ladder-climbing publicity whores who have followed them out of NYC, have rarely looked remotely like putting fame and fortune above making music that pushes the envelope. Can you name another band who sound like Yeah Yeah Yeahs? Exactly.
As an example.
"Off with your head/Dance until you're dead/Heads will roll/On the floor." - Heads Will Roll
"Flow sweetly, hang heavy/You suddenly complete me/You suddenly complete me." - Hysteric
Likelihood of a trip to the Grammys
As suggested earlier in this review, Yeah Yeah Yeahs have rarely given the impression that they are concerned with cracking the mainstream and have always seemed more comfortable with their status as outsider icons, even if it has led them to be lashed with the 'fashion band' whip (mostly due to O's extra curricular activities).
It seems unlikely that this will change with It's Blitz! which, despite being the bands cleanest, slickest album to date, is still likely to prove too oblique for many tastes at a time when the pallid stadium platitudes of Kings Of Leon are considered 'indie'.
What the others say
"It's Blitz! isn't just about streamlining and sophistication. These songs contain O's most expressive singing yet, and the tension between her vocal performances and the band's playing results in music richer in emotion than anything the trio has done since Maps." - Mikael Wood, Los Angeles Times
"A few too many opaque slowies on It's Blitz! short sells Yeah Yeah Yeahs' most attractive quality - Karen O used to be a right entertaining and imaginative radge, and now she's just a wee bitty tame." - Ally Brown, The Skinny
So is it any good?
All too often, being told that an album needs to be persevered with to be appreciated turns out to be the aural equivalent of being told that if you stare at Ann Widdecombe long enough she'll start to look like Angelina Jolie, but It's Blitz! is a rare exception to this rule. After the first few listens Yeah Yeah Yeahs brave new synth-led world sounds marginally less inspired than last year's aptly titled Donkey, CSS's insipid follow-up to their much loved debut.
However, resolution brings reward. Opening track and lead single Zero stops sounding like a woefully belated attempt to jump on the electro-pop bandwagon and becomes a thrumming saucepot of a song with Karen O coyly intoning "Try and hit the spot/Get to know it in the dark". Skeletons initially sounds like a shallow synth take on Maps before revealing itself to be a minimalistic but beguilingly electronic embrace. Only Dragon Queen fails to metamorphose into something infinitely greater than its first impression, coming across as an offcut of the aforementioned Donkey despite repeated listens.
Yet despite all the fuss surrounding Yeah Yeah Yeahs decision to drop Zinner's trademark guitars for a more dance-oriented direction, it's the frantic, bolshy riffs of Dull Life and the sonorous, romantic shoegaze of Hysteric that characterise Yeah Yeah Yeahs' new found emotional extremes and will see you saturated by the blitz they've created.
7/10
Kelvin Goodson