Album review: Yeah Yeah Yeahs's 'It's Blitz!'

"Sometimes I think I'm bigger than the sound," sang Karen O on the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' last album, 2006's "Show Your Bones." Well, now we know she is: On "It's Blitz!," O leads her bandmates in a daring reinvention of the group's music, venturing way beyond the strictures of New York revival rock into something artier, prettier and far more profound.

The first change you notice here is the absence of Nick Zinner's buzz-saw guitar, which did as much to establish the YYY sound as did O's Budweiser-banshee wail. The singer convinced Zinner to trade his beloved six-string for a synthesizer, and that gives these songs a new future-pop sheen (honed in part by Dave Sitek of TV on the Radio, who co-produced): "Skeletons" glides atop a bed of percolating Morse-code keyboard blips, and the insistent electro-funk throb in "Soft Shock" recalls classic New Order.

Even when Zinner goes back to the guitar, his playing shares little with the bare-bones garage-punk attack of yore. In "Dull Life," for example, he mirrors O's vocal melody with computer-like precision, rather than spraying noise in every available direction as he used to do.

Throughout the album, drummer Brian Chase drives the music with heightened purpose, providing a sense of destination the Yeah Yeah Yeahs have never seemed especially interested in. They come deliciously close to sounding like a straight-up disco band in "Dragon Queen," which could be Chic as fronted by Debbie Harry.

Yet "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," its breakout hit from 2003. In such cuts as "Runaway" and "Hysteric" -- where O sings, "You suddenly complete me," over a gorgeous wash of neo-shoegaze sonics -- you're not even sure what feeling the song is producing. Hopeful anxiety? Forlorn excitement? Triumphant melancholy?

The only way to decide is to keep listening.

-- Mikael Wood

Yeah Yeah Yeahs
"It's Blitz!"
(DGC/Interscope)
Three and a half stars

Albums are rated on a scale of one to four stars.

Comments

[hysteric erik]

Oh, so NOW they trade the guitars for synths....isn't that, oh, I don't know, the most played out and tired idea currently working its way through the retro mess that is our current pop landscape? Did someone slip them the MGMT album recently? Geez, what a concept. Now they recall "classic New Order"? Oh goodie, you mean all the young bands have finally stopped aping Joy Division and have moved on to....uh...New Order? When is an act going to look further than their older brother's record collection for inspiration? If O cared half as much about her music as she does about her hair and her clothes, maybe they really would be exploring some brave new worlds. As it stands, they're just striking another pose.

[Luke Cage]

@hysteric erik:

dude, maybe you should, oh, I don't know, LISTEN to the album before you go off all half-cocked. It's a great record, regardless of where the inspiration came from.

[kate]

I absolutely agree with hysteric erik. What band ISN'T adding more synths these days??
Additionally, every tune is derivative. With each of the YYY's It's Blitz! tracks I can pick out 2-5 songs they just flat out ripped off.
It seems like they are getting good reviews based on their previous work.
While this is a new direction and I do applaud them for trying something different, I wish they had tried harder and had shown more creativity.

I'm disappointed.

[Anya]

i loved the new album. dont hate on the synths, you guys. i'm a huge trance fan and the entire genre is manmade. so effing what. it melodically fits. thats what matters in music. only twelve notes on a fretboard.. only SOOO many sounds. I mean come on.