Yeah Yeah Yeah’s have always walked a tightrope above the underground and the mainstream. More often than not, the deciding factor that causes a band to sway towards the latter is a blatantly orchestrated dive into a gorged sea of crowd-pleasing melodies and hop-on-the-bandwagon pop rhythms. While Karen O & Co. have indulged the current gra that we’re having for electro-synth disco-pop on their third album, It’s Blitz!, they have manage to do it without the slightest trace of ‘our A&R man made us do this’. Whilst long-time fans might pine for Show Your Bones – era gritty punk-fuzz that they fell in love with, It’s Blitz will undoubtedly reveal Yeah Yeah Yeah’s as being amongst the original revivers of the latest incarnation of 80s disco-pop.
Lead single, Zero, opens the album on an arrestingly high note that is at once collected and manic thanks to O’s ever-meticulous, ever-mighty vocals building momentum with the aforementioned synths; a union that ultimately crescendos into a dazzling, disco-ball shaped utopia. Zero sets the tone for the album and while the tempo sometimes changes – for example on the blissfully cinematic, Skeletons – the headstrong ardour that the band radiates is always present.
Ok, so Nick Zinner has upped his usage of retro-synths and guitar effects like a 4-year-old that has just OD-ed on blue Smarties, but it works for them: the sounds aren’t just there for the sake it. Although the trio have previously been heavily reliant on their strong rhythm section, the fact that Brian Chase and Nick Zinner have thrown down the guitars and swapped snare drums for synthesisers only serves to prove that the duo are still more than capable of providing a strong backbone to the vocals – so strong in fact that their mighty soundscapes would be in danger of dwarfing any voice other than the irrepressible Ms. O’s.
Listen to this album loud, it’s gonna be the soundtrack to your summer.
