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On the Origin of CDs

There’s an admirable self-preservationist streak to It’s Blitz!. In this overexposed, media-saturated era, a band must adapt-or-die in their evolutionary process, and, thus, seeing Yeah Yeah Yeahs rewrite the book on what a YYY LP means is rewarding unto itself. Whether or not that makes the third Yeah Yeah Yeahs album a rewarding listen is another story.

This change-up is the trio's response to 2006’s Show Your Bones, a veritable Difficult Second Album whose making was filled with tension, abandoned sessions, and near-breakups.


Their first big, instrument-layering, artistically-varied album, Show Your Bones, hinted at the developments that've been embraced this time out, but was stuck in between eras; an awkward adolescence bridging their bratty youth and their confident/affluent maturity.

Belying its exclamatory title/artwork, It’s Blitz! is the most restrained, least eager Yeah Yeah Yeahs record yet, making a definite, defined step away from the the brashness by which the band first made their name. Born in new-millennial New York in a hipsterist haze of stripped-down garage-rock grime, the trio’s ascent into mass popularity —with singer Karen O becoming a bonafide celebrity— left them uneasy last time out.

Safe in the knowledge that garage-rock on a big budget blows, It’s Blitz! goes in for a wardrobe change: high-haired guitarist Nick Zinner ditching his axe for a bank of vintage synths, Karen O taming her screeches for sweetly coos, the album blessed with a sense of stylistic adventure that almost hints at genuine reinvention.

Consent to Treatment

They haven’t turned their back on the band they once were —the utterly rollicking "Dull Life" finds O screaming and Zinner slinging his axe, and "Shame and Fortune" is built on a big, dumb riff— but there's a definite shift in approach. Where once they were but guitar/drums, here they've raided the keyboard collection of long-time producer Dave Sitek (of TV on the Radio), and roped in old new-wave hand Nick Launay (whom they first worked with on Is Is) to give certain songs that corporate sheen.

The Sitek-produced "Soft Shock" is the standout; its robotic rhythms and geared-up electro-pop contrasting with a tender, human-sounding vocal from Karen O. It leads into more tenderness: "Skeletons" a synth-humming, fog-swept power-ballad that plays as a sort of electro-"Maps."

Launay helps steer the band towards radio-friendly slickness on songs like "Runaway" and "Dragon Queen." The latter is a well-oiled machine of drum programming, synths, guitar, and pitch-shifted vocals, in which little playing sounds 'live' in the slightest, and everything is buffed by effort. Previously, Yeah Yeah Yeahs might've pretended they still had punk pretensions, but, by now, they know their place. And, in such, It's Blitz! shows a band that's finally comfortable in their own commercially-accessible skin.

Record Label: Interscope
Release Date: 9 March 2009