As guitarist Nick Zinner himself once demonstrated in a
Tech Nerd column for Vice, the
Yeah Yeah Yeahs have always had a helping hand in fleshing out their "guitar + drums + banshee" lineup. In the 2005 article he describes the gear he uses, referring in particular to the ZOOM RHYTHMTRAK RT-123 drum machine: "Lots of Yeah Yeah Yeahs songs feature a keyboard sound from this, like 'Rich' and 'Maps'. I like running the RT-123 through either a distortion pedal or a cheap amp for a more fucked-up sound. Everyone thinks it’s a guitar. Ha ha."
Factor in that the three piece have also employed a shadowy fourth member in Imaad Wasif for much of their live shows anyway and all this crowing of synth additions on
It's Blitz! comes across as spurious. If anything this record is about absence rather than any addition.
Whatever their tools, Yeah Yeah Yeahs have always been a dance band at heart, at least of the hip-shaking variety if not the feet. Their 2003 LP debut
Fever to Tell was all hedonistic thrusting and bedroom thrashing. It's follow up, 2006's Show Your Bones, found the band using the massive success of
Fever To Tell's 'Maps' as their template to embrace commercial fame as well as – crucially – exploring within those boundaries. This meant ratcheting down the guitar spikiness in exchange for a darker, more varied palette. Driven by relationship breakups and inter-band breakdowns, what began with online cries of "sell out" and "going soft" produced one of the year's best, slinkiest and darkest albums.
It's Blitz! then is the sound of the band furthering these pop sensibilities; smoothing some of the edges and ditching the acoustic guitar. Which sounds dull on first glance but for one salient point; goddamn these songs are catchy. Stoked by ever clever beats from Brian Chase, weird sounds and an almost perverse interest in letting songs unfold and detour rather than repeat ad nauseum,
It's Blitz! is an immensely satisfying pop record.
Opener 'Zero' rattles along on pumping synth bleeps, masterfully adding melody upon melody until the songs actual hook kicks in at a leisurely two and a half minutes in. 'Heads Will Roll' pulls a similar trick, managing to sound like a glam Interpol on the way. 'Skeletons' and 'Runaway' crib from that 'Maps'-template, while 'Dull Life' and 'Shame and Fortune' reference the few-note guitar skronk that pumped dirty blood through both
Fever to Tell and
Show Your Bones. The one and only departure from previous incarnations is the glam-sexy 'Dragon Queen', a fluffy, disco-lite groove that could easily be a companian piece to MGMT's 'Electric Feel'. It's all wildly fun and immediately indicative of this now most recognisable of bands.
What's a bummer then is that as the band advances, Karen O's seems to be stuck in lyrical limbo. She's never been the most verbose lyricist but with heart stoppers like "As a fuck son you suck" ('Bang') and the oh-so-simple crushing of "they don't love you like I love you" ('Maps') she's often traded on brute truth as a way of leveraging her creative worth up to par with the formidable live show figure she cuts.
So inane lines like "Shake it, like a ladder to the sun / Makes me feel like a madman on the run" ('Zero') and "Off with your head / Dance till you're dead" ('Heads Will Roll') do nothing but strip power from the band. And the Karen O persona. If O's only target on the horizon is the old standby of, dancefloors and city lights et al, peppered with the starry-eyed window gazing that put the band's initials on pencil cases, then it's not just the punk rock guitars retiring with honours.
Still, her actual voice is as evocative, tender and confident as ever. And with Dave Sitek (TV on the Radio) and Australian Nick Launay (Nick Cave) managing to pull some epicly engaging sounds in the producer's corner, O isn't entirely the focus much of the time anyway. It's Blitz! is a fantastic third gear for a powerful band at the peak of their game. But, just... careful there.
By Marcus from
thevine.com.au.