Yeah Yeah Yeahs

“Sometimes I think that I’m bigger than the sound,” sang Karen O on “Cheated Hearts” from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ second album, “Show Your Bones.” If O, the leader of the New York trio, was previously afraid of overshadowing her bandmates—guitarist Nick Zinner and drummer Brian Chase—the massive shift that she directed for “It’s Blitz!” the band’s third album, would certainly not suggest so. On her orders, the band has dispensed with the frenetic guitar work that defined its first two LPs. Instead, Zinner, one of the most inventive guitarists of this decade, is reduced to playing mostly synthesizers in an attempt to create the dance music that O has demanded.

Although it may seem surprising, “It’s Blitz!” is a brave and thrilling statement from a band that seems determined to push forward. It harks back in many ways to 80s bands like New Order and The Cure, who constantly shifted and developed their sound—something that few bands are brave enough to attempt. Leaving behind their rough garage rock origins, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs have created a shiny and well-produced album. The object may have been to produce dance music, but “It’s Blitz!” is good enough to move hearts and minds as well as bodies.

Boldly, the band places the two best songs on the album right at the start. Opener “Zero” is the perfect introduction to their new direction. The song begins with synths bubbling under the surface of a drum machine and O’s vocals, but they gradually emerge out to the forefront, eventually bursting into joyous techno. “Zero” is ideal both as a lead single and as an album opener, offering immediate thrills while continuously building to higher levels of excitement.

Track two, “Heads Will Roll,” is even more direct in delivering the dance music beloved of O. As she sings, “Off with your head / Dance ’til you’re dead / Heads will roll / On the floor,” multiple synth lines whirl, finally dropping out altogether to leave a drum beat reminiscent of LCD Soundsystem.

Later tracks offer a more nuanced and diverse vision of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ new sound. “Skeletons” is a magisterial ballad that is remarkably gripping given its chilly atmospherics and unsettling percussion. The simple lyrics (no line is longer than three words) rely mostly on word association—“Fall asleep / Spin the sky / Skeleton me / Love don’t cry”—yet still manage to convey a vulnerable beauty.

Given their previous work, it is not at all surprising that many of the lyrics on “It’s Blitz!” describe love and sex. At times, O delivers lines of barely disguised innuendo, such as “The beast that I lie beneath is coming in” in “Dull Life.” That track—one of the few songs that prominently features the otherwise downplayed guitar—comes at the midpoint of the album and is one of the album’s most immediately exciting songs. But despite the enthusiasm, the track feels slightly disappointing given its failure to advance on the work the band has done previously.

In its second half, “It’s Blitz!” experiments with various sounds that, although not as successful as in the first half, offer an interesting insight into where the band might go next. “Dragon Queen” flirts a little too much with disco beats and is the sort of song that fans of the band may have feared would be produced by abandoning guitars in favor of keyboards. Fortunately, the closing duo, “Hysteric” and “Little Shadow,” ensure the album closes on a high. The former is surprisingly close in sound to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ career highlight “Maps,” offering a restrained but engaging tale of a relationship surviving on the brink. “Little Shadow” closes the album in a completely different fashion to the opening tracks. A triumph of atmosphere and lyrics rather than danceable beats, it offers definitive proof that the band has not forgotten the importance of subtle songwriting during their quest for a new direction.

The move away from guitar rock may have terrified many of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ core fans, but, fortunately, “It’s Blitz!” is such a delight that it will assuage any of these fears. Though a massive change of direction, the band’s new sound feels just right and fits surprisingly well with what they have done before. Synth lines have always been present in the band’s output; songs like “Turn Into” and “Rich” in fact relied heavily on them. This element of the band’s sound has now simply been pushed to the forefront. “It’s Blitz!” therefore manages to be both a shocking and perfectly logical step forward for the trio.

—Staff writer Chris R. Kingston can be reached at kingston@fas.harvard.edu.