It’s amazing that, despite it being approximately 133 years since Elisha Gray first patented the first electronic musical synthesizer (back when Rick Wakeman was still a fresh-faced 28 year old) and 40 odd years since the instrument was first used to make pop records, if your average guitar band decides to utilize the instrument a great section of the music press act as if it’s a staggeringly futuristic gesture akin to announcing your next album will be released solely through sat-navs. The Editors last album, for example, was praised for its modern use of the occasional Moog stab, when in reality all they’d done is moved their sound on from 1979 to about 1982.
The Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ move to a more electronic sound was actually not that far of a journey, most of their best moments have had at least one eye on the dance floor and their primal rhythmic sound has as much in common with krautrock (what a charmingly offensive name for a genre that is) than it has with the skinny denim of CBGBs. In creating their most polished (TV On the Radio’s Dave Sitek further demonstrates his band’s recent Midas touch on co-production duties) and listenable album-and their best- to date the band have also rediscovered a sense of drive and purpose that was mainly absent from the reserved and meandering Show Your Bones album. Tracks such as ‘Runaway’ and especially ‘Hysteric’ easily rank amongst the band’s very best work and show that underneath their achingly hip exterior the band are more than capable of producing pretty great pop music.
However, if the Yeah Yeah Yeahs ultimate goal is to one day produce music that is as captivating and as charismatic as their front-woman, they fall ever so slightly short once again here. Karen O dominates proceedings almost completely, exhibiting a voice able to seamlessly switch between disco queen, lovelorn balladeer and over stimulated eight-year-old, occasionally on the same line and crucially never stumbling into irritating yelping. The band’s music still sounds ever so slightly plodding- and strangely detached- in comparison, plus Nick Zimmer still has the kind of face past civilisations would have punched for sport, though I accept that second point may well be slightly irrelevant.
It’s Blitz is the closest they’ve yet come though, and most importantly it reintroduces a great sense of fun which initially seemed one of their hallmarks but was largely jettisoned on their last record. There’s a sense of a band actually enjoying the process of making music which can’t help but rub off on the listener- the sense of blissful abandon as ‘Heads Will Roll’ collapses into near chaos is one of the greatest musical pleasures put to disk this year. It’s all more than enough to make you hope they’re still taking as much pleasure out of what they do when they come round to their next album.
The Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ move to a more electronic sound was actually not that far of a journey, most of their best moments have had at least one eye on the dance floor and their primal rhythmic sound has as much in common with krautrock (what a charmingly offensive name for a genre that is) than it has with the skinny denim of CBGBs. In creating their most polished (TV On the Radio’s Dave Sitek further demonstrates his band’s recent Midas touch on co-production duties) and listenable album-and their best- to date the band have also rediscovered a sense of drive and purpose that was mainly absent from the reserved and meandering Show Your Bones album. Tracks such as ‘Runaway’ and especially ‘Hysteric’ easily rank amongst the band’s very best work and show that underneath their achingly hip exterior the band are more than capable of producing pretty great pop music.
However, if the Yeah Yeah Yeahs ultimate goal is to one day produce music that is as captivating and as charismatic as their front-woman, they fall ever so slightly short once again here. Karen O dominates proceedings almost completely, exhibiting a voice able to seamlessly switch between disco queen, lovelorn balladeer and over stimulated eight-year-old, occasionally on the same line and crucially never stumbling into irritating yelping. The band’s music still sounds ever so slightly plodding- and strangely detached- in comparison, plus Nick Zimmer still has the kind of face past civilisations would have punched for sport, though I accept that second point may well be slightly irrelevant.
It’s Blitz is the closest they’ve yet come though, and most importantly it reintroduces a great sense of fun which initially seemed one of their hallmarks but was largely jettisoned on their last record. There’s a sense of a band actually enjoying the process of making music which can’t help but rub off on the listener- the sense of blissful abandon as ‘Heads Will Roll’ collapses into near chaos is one of the greatest musical pleasures put to disk this year. It’s all more than enough to make you hope they’re still taking as much pleasure out of what they do when they come round to their next album.
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