Pop CD Review: Yeah Yeah Yeahs: It's Blitz

Published on Sunday 12 April 2009 18:41

YOU can't bake a cake without breaking an egg, and there is yolk, shell and egg white all over the eye-catching cover of Yeah Yeah Yeahs' third album.

But this time round the hip New York trio have tried a different recipe and the resulting flavours are fresh and zesty… OK, that's it for clunking metaphors – I can't work out what the empty pizza box on the inner sleeve is all about anyway.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs have always appeared to be about the challenge. They laboured over their highly anticipated debut, for example, scrapping recordings until they could meet their own exacting standards, and their reward was a cast-iron rep as one of the most influential bands around. They remain their own toughest critics, so it is maybe not that surprising that they should choose to keep themselves creatively lubricated with an audacious musical volte-face.

YYYs have moved the emphasis away from guitars and gone electro for their third album, presumably seeking a change from the shrieking scuzz-punk of their first two albums. The change of direction came about by chance, thanks to the purchase of a vintage keyboard on eBay. Previously, the band's sound has been all about Nick Zinner's guitar playing, but as the trio worked on their new songs, his latest electronic plaything unexpectedly set the tone for the album. "Obviously, synths have been in rock music forever," notes Zinner, "but to us it feels new, which is all we really care about, that excitement."

Zinner certainly sounds as energised on keys as on six strings – the guitars have not been ditched though, they just take more of a complementary role on It's Blitz! Singer Karen O, meanwhile, is such a consummate frontwoman that she can convince as naturally as a post-Debbie Harry disco queen as she can bearing her New York punk she-cat claws.

Entirely comfortable with their latest incarnation, the trio – completed by drummer Brian Chase – flaunt their new robes from the get-go. Lead single Zero is no cautious lead-in, but their poppiest moment yet, aimed squarely at the dancefloor. It's a flippant, fun song with a great synthquake instrumental break and catchy lyrics which don't make any real sense but sound cool. "We've got a death grip on the adolescent way of feeling things," comments Karen O in an "explanation" of lines such as "shake it like a ladder to the sun".

Heads Will Roll sticks with the commercial synth punk, featuring some breathy Blondie-style action, which should sound great in its natural environment, pounding out at top volume at the indie disco. Like an electro PJ Harvey, Karen O delivers more impressionistic lyrics about "glitter on the west streets, silver over everything" in an organic response to the music.

Softshock is a more subtle, seamless layering of guitars and keyboards, while Dragon Queen is a nicely constructed slice of skinny disco which keeps them in step with the times, without packing that killer hook which their New York contemporaries MGMT and Santogold are so good at delivering.

Skeletons is an intriguing oddity which starts out cool and Kraftwerk-like, before introducing a distinctly unexpected Celtic skirl to the keyboard refrain and the marching drumbeat. If the Yeah Yeah Yeahs were from Bonnybridge rather than Brooklyn, the Scottish government could have been beating a path to their door instead of hawking Sandi Thom around for the Year of Homecoming celebrations.

Less notably, Dull Life provides a clattering, rocky flourish and Shame And Fortune is really more of a groove than a song, on which Karen O is not required to do much more than whoop and bark.

Although she doesn't really stretch her vocals on this album, there are a couple of tracks which spotlight her voice over a simple keyboard refrain. Runaway is one of the more affecting, naked numbers on the album, which appears to be about the pain of enforced separation – "I was feeling sad… highways flew by… no sense of time" – a subject she has already broached on YYYs favourite Maps.

The melodic Hysteric is another of O's tender love songs, in which a succession of fairly oblique images ends in the realisation that "you suddenly complete me". The album then bows out on its most delicate moment, Little Shadow. With its understated organ and glacial keyboards, it is the peaceful, barefoot walk home in the early hours after the impromptu party Yeah Yeah Yeahs probably weren't expecting to host.