Yeah Yeah Yeahs – ‘It’s Blitz’

Having burst out of NYC at the start of the century to fill the role of punk icon, clothes horse and queen of attitude, it doesn’t take a genius to join up the dots between Karen O and Debbie Harry. Now, like Harry did a quarter of a century before her, Karen O leads her band into the world of disco. 

It’s a more discerning brand of disco though, through witch you can still recognise the frailty, rawness and anger you may already have come to love from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Lead single ‘Zero’ bleeds easily into ‘Heads Will Roll’, which with slightly more grace and synth than the opener, forces a chunk of disco down your throat ‘Phenomena’ style. ‘Dragon Queen’ is cut very much from the same cloth; a disco-punk fusion with indie undertones.

The links between ‘Its Blitz!’ and previous album ‘Show Your Bones’ belong to Chase’s addictive tribal tubthumping and O’s sumptuous and chameleonic vocals. Although you might miss the shrieking from tracks such as ‘Rich’ and ‘Pin,’ she proves here how good her voice actually is.

‘Soft Shock’ perfectly represents its title to the point of onomatopoeia, with Karen’s oohs flirting with guitarist Zinner’s Foals-esque instrumental – another band heavily influenced by Sitek, who, once again, seems to know which boundaries to push and just how far.

It is the midst of this album that may split opinion, as ‘Dull Life’, ‘Shame and Fortune’ and ‘Runaway’ all lack the immediacy we are accustomed to, even if the first two are the dirtier, punkier instrumentals on the album.‘Hysteric’ is a song born of the very essence of ‘Fever to Tell,’ but winds the party down a notch. Its layers of class, gentle refrains and dulcet tones will draw you in time and again. Closer ‘Little Shadow’ slows things even further, and begs “Into the night, will you follow me?” When Karen O puts it like that, who wouldn’t?

‘Its Blitz!’ is thankfully not the about turn the band had claimed, but instead demonstrates a brilliant progression in their sound. Had it presented itself with a tad more edge over sheen then it wouldn’t have been far from perfect.

9

By Dean Renphrey