Album: Yeah Yeah Yeahs / It's Blitz!

Artist: Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Title: It's Blitz!

I suppose one way to look at the Yeah Yeah Yeahs is as a malleable theoretical apparatus used as the delivery vehicle for Karen O.'s starpower. Another way would be to see most of their career moves as reactions to one outsized hit. And they are, of course, a rather good band that's a little bit creatively restless. With all this in mind, the shift in sound on album number three seems perfectly fitting. More synths, less guit is the basic template here, and it generally works very well. YYY work well with some manner of pulsating throb behind them, and these particular keyb-driven beats do the job just fine. The added advantage is that they also work well for the slowed-down songs — in fact, they are rather good in that regard.

The album starts quite strongly and ends well, but dips palpably in between. "Dull Life", a rare track here that sounds like a holdover from Show Your Bones launches this middle section¹. Not that it ever gets anywhere less than engaging, but there's a gap between the great and the pretty good stuff here.

Appended to the album are four acoustic versions, substituting strings for synths, that don't really add much to the proceedings. At a cynical level, these tracks feel like an indication that YYY are ready to entertain all offers for Starbucks compilations or appearances in episode-ending dramatic montages on network TV. They probably would have been better served if left severed from the album proper.

In the end though, this is good stuff, and does seem to indicate that YYY are trying to big up their sound and their audience without losing what makes them special. Good luck to 'em.

Track picks: 1 - "Zero", 4 - "Skeletons"

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¹ Although if there wasn't a track like this in the middle, I'd almost certainly be writing a sentence like, "After the first four tracks, the sound becomes a bit monochromatic, with no tensions to play against". There's no winning when you're dealing with a crank, really.