This week's CD choice reviewed
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
It's Blitz Polydor ****
There are a lot of “I’m eccentric I am” females out there clutching synths and attempting to rewrite
the MTV of the 1980s musical handbook. After hearing what Karen O has done on this magical album, most of them could safely give up.
While Yeah Yeah Yeahs may have history as a studied cool indie outfit, here they get the glitterball out, ramp up the keyboard sound and come across like the in-house band for Studio 54. Recorded in an old barn in Massachusetts during a snowstorm, with synthesizers bought off eBay, It's Blitzis more of a disco detour than a progression from their earlier work.
Zero, the opener (and first single), is as good a start as any: the track is carried along on a wave of bubbling synths and sounds like the sort of thing that early Cyndi Lauper or Debbie Harry would have killed for. Expect it to be remixed to death this summer.
The pace never drops: Heads Will Rollhas sheets of guitars and a neat dance sheen over which Karen O exclaims "Off, off, off with your head/Dance, dance, dance till you're dead". Like so much of this album, the song represents that most elusive of beasts: the perfect indie/dance crossover moment.
The tempo switches work well here. Both Skeletons, a slow burner of an anthem, and Little Shadow, a bursting-at-the-seams ballad, have a fuller and richer sound that anything Yeah Yeah Yeah have done before.
Karen O’s voice is up to the task – most notably on the sultry pop of Soft Shock. An underappreciated vocalist, she is detached and engaged in equal terms. And she’s a lost some of the “screechiness” from previous albums – which can only be a good thing. Comparisons to early Blondie and even The Killers will be thrown around; don’t take them seriously.
This is all very on-message, zeitgeist-snogging stuff. Older fans might find it a bit too intoxicatingly dance-led, but there’s a great sense of ambition scaled in this collection of sophisticated and shimmering dance-pop. www.yeah yeahyeahs.com
Download tracks: Zero, Heads Will Roll
