It's Blitz!

It's Blitz!

by Yeah Yeah Yeahs
It's Blitz!

It's Blitz!

by Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Vinyl LP(Long Playing Record)

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Overview

Never content to stay in one musical place for very long, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs take their restlessness to the limit on It's Blitz! -- and wind up making some of their most contented-sounding songs. As if to prove one more time that they're not just the architects of New York's early-2000s rock renaissance, Karen O, Nick Zinner, and Brian Chase strip away the guitars and explosive dynamics of their early work even more thoroughly here than they did on Show Your Bones. In their place are shiny keyboards, synthetic sounds galore, and a very different kind of energy. It's Blitz!'s images of a woman's hand bursting an egg and fleshy tomatoes and mushrooms spread across an otherwise empty pizza box are surprising, immediate, and strangely sensual, and that goes double for the actual music. The album's first three songs are a blitz of bliss, especially "Zero," which kicks things off with blatantly fake beats, revved-up synth arpeggios, and O's command to "get your leather on." Radiating joy and confidence, she and the rest of the band couldn't be further from Show Your Bones' introspection as the song climbs to ecstatic heights. "Heads Will Roll" shows just how ably the Yeah Yeah Yeahs blend their rock firepower with dance surroundings, as Zinner's prickly guitars get equal time with spooky synth strings and O makes "you are chrome" sound like the coolest compliment ever. Meanwhile, "Soft Shock"'s dreamy, almost naive-sounding electronics make O's vocals -- which are much less affected than ever before -- feel even more natural and vulnerable. Elsewhere, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and producers David Sitek and Nick Launay find other ways to shake things up, from the disco kiss chase of "Dragon Queen," which features Sitek's fellow TV on the Radio member Tunde Adebimpe on backing vocals, to "Shame and Fortune," which pares down the band's tough, sexy rock to its most vital essence and provides Chase and Zinner with a showcase not found anywhere else on the album. However, It's Blitz!'s bold moments are a bit misleading: the album's heart is often soft and searching, offering some of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' quietest work yet. This approach doesn't always work, as on the too-long "Runaway," but when it connects, the results are gorgeous. "Skeletons" is luminous with an oddly Celtic-tinged synth part; "Hysteric," a love song about being happy with someone rather than trying to make him or her stay, feels like the mirror twin of "Maps." The serenity in It's Blitz!'s ballads feels worlds apart from Show Your Bones in a much less obvious way than the album's outbursts. But between the violently happy songs and the softer ones, this is some of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' most balanced and cohesive music. ~ Heather Phares

Product Details

Release Date: 04/06/2009
Label: Polydor
UPC: 0602527025766
Rank: 3221

Tracks

  1. Zero
  2. Heads Will Roll
  3. Soft Shock
  4. Skeletons
  5. Dull Life
  6. Shame and Fortune
  7. Runaway
  8. Dragon Queen
  9. Hysteric
  10. Little Shadow

Album Credits

Performance Credits

Yeah Yeah Yeahs   Primary Artist
Nick Zinner   Bass,Guitar,Keyboards,Drum Machine
Karen O   Vocals
Imaad Wasif   Guitar
Brian Chase   Drums,Cymbals,Percussion
Tunde Adebimpe   Vocals,Trumpet,Vocals (Background)
Eric Biondo   Trumpet
Greg Kurstin   Piano
Jane Scarpantoni   Cello
Stuart Bogie   Sax (Tenor),Sax (Baritone)
Leo Soeda   Cello

Technical Credits

Ted Jensen   Mastering
Chris Coady   Audio Engineer,Assistant Engineer
Chris Moore   Audio Engineer,Assistant Engineer
Nick Zinner   Composer
Karen O   Composer,Art Direction
Mark "Spike" Stent   Mixing
Justin Leah   Audio Engineer,Assistant Engineer
Nick Launay   Mixing,Engineer,Producer,Audio Engineer,Audio Production
Mike Laza   Audio Engineer,Assistant Engineer
Brian Chase   Composer
Atom   Audio Engineer
MSTRKRFT   Remix Engineer
Yeah Yeah Yeahs   Composer
David Andrew Sitek   Engineer,Producer,Audio Production,Assistant Producer
Matty Green   Mixing Assistant
Alyssa Pittaluga   Audio Engineer,Assistant Engineer
Chris Kasych   Mixing Assistant
Aaron Dembe   Audio Engineer,Assistant Engineer
Charles Godfrey   Audio Engineer
Laura Haber   Management
Gillian Rivers   Arranger
Tony Ciulla   Management
Louie Bandak   A&R
Autumn de Wilde   Photography
Seb Marling   Art Direction
David Belisle   Photography
Eric Uhlir   Photography
Karen Orzolek   Composer
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