Yeah Yeah Yeahs - It's Blitz!

The first EP and album were striking throwbacks disguised, cleverly, as artistic statements. Karen O sang, wrote, and writhed like many young women whose exceptional histrionic gifts copped to romantic misery. I may have overrated 2006's Show Yr Bones, whose thick acoustic textures bespoke a professionalism you don't ordinarily hear in post-punk inspired bands uninterested in Linda Perry, so Karen O fronting an electro-punk sounded like a dream I'd never wake up to. Wow. Stretching and reaching like Deborah Harry, Romeo Void, and Le Tigre were bad dreams she couldn't wait to tell her analyst about, Karen O hooks Nick Zimmer and Brian Chase up with Dave Sitek and the best drumpads and synths that money can buy. It's not that Karen is more human than ever; it's that the truce between her limitations and appetites encompasses sloganeering far beyond what Romeo Void and Le Tigre's logocentric approach. Until the pillowy "Hysteric" the middle stretch sticks to their midtempo bellow-and-belch, but they've earned it; the electro-Burundi of "Shame and Fortune," "Zero" and especially song-of-the-year "Heads Will Roll" open possibilities promising enough to make the band stop in its tracks. I can't wait until Hot Chip or Aeroplane loops the "Off off with your head/dance dance dance till your dead" part in "Heads Will Roll" into infinity (btw: "You are chrome" is Gary Numan-worthy), reminding Karen and her two indie cohorts that getting lost in music pays better dividends than pretending it's a backdrop. Faults and all, I love this fucking thing.