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Yeah Yeah Yeahs, It's Blitz!
08/19/2009 In 2003 the Yeah Yeah Yeahs met mass appeal with an MTV video indicative of the musician struggle nationwide: an epic performance that no one seemed to notice. Although "Maps" was essentially a romance ballad, many were quick to ignore, opting instead to focus on the band’s fresh take on alternative music through layered guitar textures, dynamic structuring, powerful drum fills and Karen O’s "oh wait, a singer actually does something?" vocal style. "Maps" rapidly became a popular tune. However, those privileged purchasers of the album Fever To Tell, quickly realized that the Yeah Yeah Yeahs had much more to offer than sappy songs of unrequited love. In fact, "Maps" is quite the opposite. What they got was an album filled with Dada-esque ecstasy: Nick Zinner's screeching treble riffs; Karen O's dominatrix in need of a Xanax vocals; and Brian Chase's revival of... Well... drumming, as he tied it all together in a wretchedly sour but sweet sort of way. Each song on Fever to Tell was more dynamic than the last because each song was filled with unpretentious yet highly crafted displays of musical mastery. The album came to represent a swagger and no hold’s bar of "rockin" out that had come to lack in most forms of an increasingly commercialized indie rock genre. This would be their legacy. Years later the Yeah Yeah Yeahs released Show Your Bones. In many ways, the band had "matured" (a euphemism for sold-out). While their trademarks would still brand the album as uniquely theirs, their previous craft for constructing songs on textural explosions tamed as their solid sound emaciated into smoother, more traditional radio tracks. Show Your Bones wasn't an absolute loss, and the most die hard granted the band a hiatus from the raucous shockwave that gained them a feature status on the no-wave documentary Kill Your Idols. Some still held out hope that lightening, could in fact, strike twice. Shortly thereafter, YYY's would release their EP Is Is; a cluster of dark and melancholic tunes that seemed to rehash Show’s "The Sweets" and "Warrior." For a band with a fairly consistent output, their aesthetic gets less and less consistent. The spaces between Fever and Show indicated a pandering to accessibility desired by mass audiences (another notable difference between their premiere EP and the former). For a while, this was tolerable as each song - vehement or "charismatic" - still offered an electric blend of unparalleled musicianship. However, the aesthetic on Yeah Yeah Yeah's third full-length release It’s Blitz! is more puzzling than their lyrics. More aptly titled as, "It’s Glitz" for its overly glam quality well-suited for club scenes: think Trent Reznor DJing New Order. However, Blitz is not entirely without meaning as the band seems to have completely laid siege to its entire foundation. Chase’s quaking toms and snare syncopations now mechanized into a drum machine. Zinner seems to have a new hobby: the synthesizer. His penchant for treble textures still tries to sparkle on tracks like "Dull Life," however something that was such an asset to the band is absolutely lackluster in the ashes of Blitz’s overly produced new direction. Perhaps the only vestige of YYYs is Karen O's voice - which has yet to recover from Show Your Bones. O, who seemed the likeliest champion of Lydia Lunch, now seems situated in Bowie's Let's Dance phase. Still crouched in the dark recesses of Is Is, Blitz is more poetic than agitated. "Runaway," with its (again) Reznor-esque toy piano melody and synth-string passages sounds like a funereal lullaby. While "Hysteric" is Limahl-ish as Karen O reluctantly but sweetly wisps "Flow sweetly, hang heavy, you suddenly complete me." There are a few attempts to recapture the aesthetic of yore as "Dull Life" and "Shame and Fortune" menace slightly with O's vocal strains and disjunct rhythms (recycled in "Shame" from Show Your Bone's "Turn Into") shriek over Zinner's rare and unsatisfying use of guitar. However, as stated, this sounds belabored and uninspired without Chase's furious percussion mastery to give it some adrenaline. On one hand, kudos can be given to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs on this latest venture: it seems to be a conscious effort to never strike the same place twice. If this be the case, paramours of Fever to Tell will always be jilted as the band seems to have moved on to younger and less complicated acquaintances. At this point we can speculate that the band is attempting to recreate artsy New York music movements such as new wave and no-wave. If so, this latest assault would be less offensive to the elitists who still hold out hope for another rendition of their self-titled EP (if only in attitude). But, don’t be surprised when you hear "Zero" shuffled alongside Katy Perry at your local Gap. Comments [post a comment]
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Saturday, March 13, 2010
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Yeah Yeah Yeahs David Bowie Limahl Trent Reznor MTV Brian Chase Nick Zinner Karen O Kill Your Idols