Feb 19 2009 5:50 pm, Niall Doherty
First Listen: Yeah Yeah Yeahs
‘It’s Blitz!’
(Polydor)
It’s been three years since Yeah Yeah Yeahs released ‘Show Your Bones’, an album that took a deliberate turn away from the new wave jitter-punk of their debut. Their third effort, ‘It’s Blitz!’, has been three years in the making, with a limited edition EP last year the only peep out of the band in a while. We give ‘It’s Blitz!’ the First Listen treatment and, as a magazine who’ve supported Yeah Yeah Yeahs since their first visit to the UK back in 2002, cross our fingers and hope for the best…
‘Zero’
‘It’s Blitz!’ begins with ‘Zero’, with a hypnotic throbbing guitar line wasting no time in grabbing our attention, Karen O advising that we “Shake it/Like a ladder to the sun” before drums, staccato guitar jitters and synthy soundscapes add some colour. The whole thing then goes three-dimensional with some almost-industrial sonic hip-swivels about two minutes in as everything comes to a dancefloor-seducing climax, Karen O singing “get your leather on…”. Sounds like this is the party-inducing centre-of-attention Karen of their debut, rather than the reflective-want-to-go-to-sleep Karen of ‘Show Your Bones’. An exciting opener with a bucketload of instruments vying for our attention.
‘Heads Will Roll’
A pure 70s New York disco vibe pumps through ‘Heads Will Roll’’s veins, a swell of melancholic electronic strings and Karen O’s reverb-soaked vocals (“Heads will roll/On the floor!” goes her opening line) joining hands with a robotic dance beat and strutting forth in a futuristic, militant groove. This almost sound like a noughties Eurythmics as Karen’s vocals swirl into a sort of cloud-inhabiting Donna Summer eeriness halfway through and an absurdly amount of brilliant Nick Zinner guitar lines, all underpinned with an intestine-rippling distorto-riff, frogleap each other as the song marches towards the finish line. So far, ‘It’s Blitz!’ sounds like Yeah Yeah Yeahs have reacted to Brooklyn’s burgeoning creatives by underlining how much better than everyone there are than everyone else. Effortlessly brilliant.
‘Soft Shock’
Like the two previous songs, there’s an immediate electro underbelly to ‘Soft Shock’, a gentle wall of sound that you can’t see to the bottom of. The tremolo’d synth that lazily surges through the speakers is layered with beats’n’bleeps, sounding like New York’s skyscrapers all turning their lights on and off at the same time. Unlike ‘Zero’ and ‘Heads Will Roll’, though, ‘Soft Shock’ doesn’t press its foot down on the accelerator as it moves forward, the music teetering on the edge of chaos, slowly toppling over itself around Karen O’s prurient vocals. This isn’t as immediate as the other two, but there’s the definite impression that there’s a great song in ‘Soft Shock’ that will reward repeated listens.
‘Skeletons’
All the tracks here share a trait of slow beginnings and ‘Skeletons’ continues that. Karen O sings softly, one slow syllable at a time, as a textured, expansive wall of sound (I’m really trying not to keep using the word soundscape) builds around her, hypnotically gliding towards its percussive, orchestral climax. You know the echo’ed guitar that kicks off ‘Maps’? Well, ‘Skeletons’ sounds like they’ve taken that bit and warped it into a choral, cathedral-sized anti-anthem. Not much actually happens in ‘Skeletons’, but it sounds beautiful. Doves said that they wrote ‘Jetstream’ as the pretend soundtrack to the end of Blade Runner – ‘Skeletons’ should soundtrack the bit when Harrison Ford finds out he’s a replicant. Hope I haven’t started an intergalactic 'Blade Runner' debate with that comment, Blade Runner jobsworths.
‘Dull Life’
Nothing’s ever stark on ‘It’s Blitz!’ – ‘Dull Life’ starts off with just a delayed guitar and Karen O’s voice, but behind that you can hear – arghhh! – soundscapes twinkling. Soon, though, ‘Dull Life’ kicks into glorious life, as close to straightahead art-rock as anything on the album so far. Brian Chase’s drums roll along with a hillbilly-on-speed groove and Nick Zinner’s guitars almost sound conventional, his angular, art-rock riffery armed with an FM crunch. Karen O’s melodies are as hooky as anything she’s ever sung on ‘Dull Life’ – the girl goddamn sounds like she’s having fun, innit.
‘Shame And Fortune’
Just entering the halfway point and not a misstep on ‘It’s Blitz!’ yet. Yeah Yeah Yeahs sound almost arrogantly excellent. ‘Shame And Fortune’ is a reminder of the intricate, dynamic patterns the trio are capable of weaving, a malevolent, fuzz-bass guitar clearing the path for a wickedly irascible rock song. Karen O’s lyrics aren’t anything special – a bunch of rhyming couplets about “playing your game” – but they’re delivered with such cool-as-fuck vitriol that’s it’s impossible not to be enthralled. The drums and guitar, meanwhile, shouldn’t go together at all but sound amazing, Zinner’s metallic, compressed guitars sliding perfectly around Chase’s offbeat stomps.
‘Runaway’
The first song of the album not to have any electronica interference – at the beginning, anyway – ‘Runaway’ starts off with a haunted vocal and some plinky plonky piano, courtesy of The Bird And The Bee member Greg Kurstin. This sounds more like the sort of desolate alt.folk that you’d associate with Cat Power, although some skyscraping sears of guitar halfway through give it a trademark Yeah Yeah Yeahs edge, an orchestral swoop as the song enters its final minute giving it a monumental finale. Another highpoint on an album where, so far, there hasn’t been anything that’s anywhere near to being merely good…
‘Dragon Queen’
The dancing shoes are well and truly buckled on for ‘Dragon Queen’, TV On The Radio members Tunde Adebimpe and Kyp Malone – not to forget Dave Sitek, on production duties – helping to ignite the shakey-shakey vibe. ‘Dragon Queen’ sounds like Talking Heads’ percussive, repetitive grooves getting a modern Manhattan makeover, the song evolving its disco groove as it goes rather than being divided into traditional verses and choruses.
‘Hysteric’
A song called ‘Hysteric’ on ‘Fever To Tell’ would definitely definitely be a new-wave jitterfest, but one of the reasons ‘It’s Blitz!’ sounds so good is that it’s the sound of a band desperate not to repeat themselves. The verses here – yeah, they’ve gone back to ye olde song structure of old for this one – sending the wheel of influence (a concept we have just made up right now) full circle by resembling a less bedroomy Chairlift, whilst the chorus sends the whole thing skywards with airy Kate Bush fairy vocals. Like ‘Soft Shock’, this is a song whose strengths aren’t immediately apparent and one that will need revisiting.
‘Little Shadow’
Onto the last song already! Now, I think I can safely say that, after nine tracks where seven have been straight-up brilliance and two have been mmm-this-sounds-interesting-I’ll-come-back-later, that even if ‘Little Shadow’ samples the chorus of Scouting For Girls’ ‘She’s So Lovely’ and consists of playing those tortuous words on a loop for 2 hours and 17 minutes, that ‘It’s Blitz!’ is an amazing return for Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Ok, so 10 seconds in and no Scouting For Girls samples yet, instead there’s gentle acoustic picking and Karen O whispering “To the night/Will you follow me” as church organs and drums gently raise their volume into earshot. It soon morphs into an epic, if slightly melancholic, closer, a cool twist on stadium rock written by people who don’t like stadium rock for people who don’t like stadium rock. Like most songs on the album, it doesn’t overstay its welcome, finishing just when you’re getting to grips with it. As first listens go, Yeah Yeah Yeahs have made an album that, on first listen at least, sounds like an instant classic, an enriching fulfilment of the potential that they’ve never quite filled. It’s astonishing.
