Review Summary: This was intended to be published in my high schools newspaper, so pardon the cheesyness.
The indie-pop band Yeah Yeah Yeahs have generally been out of the mainstream music business, until a few years ago when their song Maps was released on the game Rockband. This gave them decent exposure, and made Maps their most popular song. Since then they’ve released two more albums, “Show Your Bones” in 2006, and “It’s Blitz!” just last March. The latest release was a major turn for the band because in this album, they started using more keyboard work to give it a more electric feel, similar to that of The Killers critically acclaimed album, “Hot Fuss”. Although the band has a little bit of a different sound change, their style has remained the same, so any long term fans won’t discredit this album as another band taken over by its record producers to create a false image. “It’s Blitz!” is a fantastic album, and shows great potential for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
The album is opened with the lead single of the album, Zero. It’s an electric-rock song that is great because it shows off all of the bands talents. Karen O’s singing, Nick Zinner’s guitar, and Brian Chase’s drumming are all shown off. Although it shows off the talents, they only get better later on in the album. Overall it’s a good opening track, and gives the listener a good taste of what the rest of the album will sound like. Next song is Heads Will Roll; it’s very similar to Zero in the sense of the electric-rock sound. This song is not nearly as good as Zero in the vocal and lyric department though, and really the best part of this album is the catchy drum beat. Followed up with the song Soft Shock, which is probably the song that’s more similar to past Yeah Yeah Yeahs albums.
The fourth track, Skeletons is one of the best songs on the whole album. It’s slower, but shows so much emotion in Karen O’s voice. The song starts out with almost nothing but vocals, but as it progresses, more drums and keyboard are slowly built up, until they slowly drift away in the very end. The following two songs Dull Life and Shame and Fortune are the two most electric sounding songs on the album. On Dull Life it sounds good, but with Shame and Fortune Karen O’s voice sounds too altered and distant. This is the one low point in the album, but quickly moves past it to the seventh track, Runaway, the next best track in comparison to Skeletons. The softness and emotion makes it a good track, but there’s also a disappointing side to it. The whole song the beat make it feel like its building up to something, like a soft bubble about to burst into a loud emotional song, but the listener is sadly mislead and the song just ends with nothing spectacular happening.
Dragon Queen, is probably the weirdest song on the album, it has a very strange disco sounding beat, and the lyrics are sung very low and unique. Some people will find something they like in the song, but others may ask, “What in the world did I just listen too?” Hysteric is another good song, with a sound similar to Runaway. Honestly the album should just have been ended here, but they continued it with one more song Little Shadow, probably the worst song on the album, just because it’s plain boring and there’s nothing creative about it at all. Although if you’re lucky enough to hear the Deluxe Version of “It’s Blitz!” then you will get four bonus tracks. (Acoustic versions of the songs, Soft Shock, Skeletons, Hysteric, and Little Shadow) The acoustic version of Little Shadow is at least a little bit better than the original.
Overall “It’s Blitz!” is a great and entertaining album to listen too. It has its high points (Zero, Skeletons, Runaway) and its low points (Shame and Fortune, Little Shadow) It’s defiantly worth the money, especially the Deluxe Edition with the four acoustic bonus tracks. The guitar playing is a little bit more relaxed and more keyboards are put in than unusual, but the guitar playing that is there, is nothing short of excellent. Much like the album as a whole; nothing short of excellent.
