It's Blitz

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs still create great, compelling pop-rock, largely because of the way the songs themselves are organized, with conventional verse-chorus structures repeatedly eschewed in favor of detours, miniature grooves, and lengthy asides that produce the sensation of a band and a singer impulsively following their own emotional whims.

Despite its obvious debt to the ’80s and its (appreciated) nods to the trio’s own past, it’s their most modern, innovative record yet.

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, as you knew them, are dead. Just don’t be surprised if you like new version a little more.

It's Blitz! succeeds because YYYs have managed to mix the human and the electronic, the emotional and the artsy, the fashion-forward and the oddly retro. [May 2009, p.94]

So let any indie bands planning a trip to the keyboard shop take note: this is how it's done, with a desire to surprise and be surprised. [May 2009, p.104]

It’s no revolution, but It’s Blitz!’s heartfelt love letter to the transcendent possibilities of the dancefloor is an unexpectedly emphatic reassertion of why Yeah Yeah Yeahs are one of the most exciting bands of this decade.

The big news, though, isn't YYY's groovier sound--it's the heat they radiate.

That they emerge victorious is a tribute to the strength of these fine songs as well as some seriously glamourous production attitude.

This act continues to create work that is consistently worth consideration. [Spring 2009, p.75]

Karen O's froideur carries even lesser songs, such as Skeletons' formulaic new wave, and imbues the ballad Little Shadow with the majesty of an ice queen. Great stuff.

It's Blitz reveals just how much the trio have grown and how well they know exactly the strange angular planet that their music inhabits.

The main problem with It’s Blitz! is that the band’s kind of retreat to kicky electroclash feels a little late to the party. Too many other musicians have gone to this particular well over the past half-decade, and few of them had a Karen O at their disposal. Still, these synth-driven pop songs aren’t really much different from Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ guitar-driven ones.

The result is the alternative pop album of the decade--one that imbues the Killers' "Hot Fuss" and MGMT's "Oracular Spectacular" with a remarkable emotional depth and finesse.

The trio hasn’t quite put together an album of complete heart-stoppers just yet, but Blitz charts them in the right direction.

Subbing out an instrument and switching up the tempos that way is a fairly radical change. Still, the result feels unexpectedly familiar.

Sure, it's easy to lament how fangless they sound here, with just hints of the skuzzy basement ferocity that has made Fever to Tell one of the decade's most enduring records. But the finesse they display here, on their most mature and stylistically coherent record, may ultimately serve them even better.

It’s Blitz isn’t FTT, and may not be remembered as highly (particularly by those who never give it a chance), but it is a logical progression.

From most bands, half of a great record would be an incredible accomplishment, but we’ve heard so much better from them.

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs haven’t changed as much as they’d like us to believe. They still write great pop rock songs.

It is precisely due to the band’s finesse that It’s Blitz! is so refreshing, despite being an old sound wrapped in glitter veneer.

It's Blitz will probably date badly and, despite clearly being better than "Fever To Tell," it probably won't be remembered by as many people, or as fondly by those people. Regardless, it IS a great album, and one that's come completely out of leftfield as far as its style and its depth goes.

It’s Blitz is representative of Yeah Yeah Yeahs tightening as an unit and delivering their best album to date.

After 10 songs, the digital version It's Blitz! is padded out with four acoustic renditions of songs on the album. But even with an acoustic guitar at the forefront and Karen O harmonizing with string sections and pianos, the songs--and, crucially, the melodies - still don't convey much.

Fuller backdrops don’t inhibit Karen O at all. She still sounds unguarded and madcap, sometimes girlishly vulnerable, sometimes indomitable.

Six years later, the New York trio's third LP, It's Blitz!, is only as subversive as its cover image.

It’s Blitz! is the sound of a band reborn with new momentum, and on an album that requires dancing, the message is clear: It doesn’t matter where you came from. Just keep moving.

Any doubts that the Yeah Yeah Yeahs are a band for the ages are wiped from the face of the earth three fragile piano chimes into 'Runaway,' one of the most epic and heart-ripping mediations on loss and loneliness ever. [Sprin 2009, p.91]

Most of that sonic rage is in absentia on It’s Blitz!, which is part OK electro dance record and part atmospheric boredom courtesy of producer nerd David Sitek, who, it’s becoming increasingly clear, saves all of his best ideas for his main squeeze TV On the Radio.

These songs contain O's most expressive singing yet, and the tension between her vocal performances and the band's playing results in music richer in emotion than anything the trio has done since 'Maps,' its breakout hit from 2003.

It seems only logical that the three of them have relied so heavily on synths to create It's Blitz--despite Zinner's natural gift for manipulating the guitar--an album that's effectively a love letter to the dancefloor.

Nothing much is different with their latest triumph, It’s Blitz!, a sprawling, eclectic set of dazzling new music.

If this is the band's "Parallel Lines," they've brought tunes worth comparing.

Their third album offers an advance on the ecstatic dance punk of 2003 debut "Fever to Tell" and beefy rock of 2006's "Gold Lion," boldly pushing synths centre stage while sacrificing none of their vitality.

NYC art-rockers go in for some ch-ch-changes on excellent third album.