It's Blitz! by Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Critics stumbled over their superlatives when art-rockers Yeah Yeah Yeahs released their sophomore album Show Your Bones in 2006. But as The Strokes found with First Impressions of Earth that year, the public’s taste for New Yorkers with angular guitars had tailed off, and inoffensive OC indie (The Fray, Snow Patrol, Death Cab for Cutie) had taken over. Having almost split during its recording, Karen O’s trio then suffered the double indignity of seeing its acclaimed spawn become a commercial flop. 

But like so many great bands the Yeah Yeah Yeahs seemed to summon inspiration in adversity, first releasing the terrific stopgap EP Is Is in 2007 and then dropping this triumphant, dance-inspired collection in March. The title namechecks the London club that birthed the dandyish New Romantic scene, but the predominant styles here are the disco and electro-pop that preceded and followed that movement. There are reverberations of Giorgio Moroder’s hedonistic buzz, as well as early Depeche Mode and The Cure, and it’s still hard to hear the Yeah Yeah Yeahs without thinking how evocative Karen O’s vocals are of a certain Chrissie Hynde, so completely does she dominate this glossy new sound. 

Terrifically catchy tunes are dotted throughout: the emotive ‘Skeletons’, (which recalls the now-classic mopefest ‘Maps’), infectious opener 'Zero’ and its shimmering successor ‘Heads Will Roll’ to name but three. It’s ‘Runaway’, though, that finds the band in entirely new territory, coming on more like a pretty, Evanescence-style piano ballad than a gritty garage mood piece. The fizzy new style doesn’t always work – ‘Dragon Queen’ sounds like an out-take from Keane’s recent ’80s pop-flavoured forays – while devout fans might be dismayed to find only ‘Dull Life’ and ‘Shame and Fortune’ carry the torch for the band’s stripped-down, fuzzed-up rock of yore. 

Hipster tastemakers are already heralding a trio of indie-folk releases as albums of the year – Grizzly Bear’s Veckatimest, Dirty Projectors’ Bitte Orca and Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavilion – but in the rush to find this year’s Fleet Foxes, let’s not overlook the more established bands. It seems Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ time as major-league pretenders of White Stripes proportions has come and gone, but they’ll surely settle for cult status and releases as accomplished as It’s Blitz! – the most consistently accessible, and finest album of their career to date.

It’s Blitz! is #1 on our top ten indie music albums for 2009!

It’s Blitz! was released by Interscope

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