When first pressing play I found myself feeling apprehensive and little sick even; like seeing an old friend for the first time in years. Would I still have the same feeling of mesmerization and lust? Listening to 'It's Blitz' for the first time is disorienting and uneasy experience with stabs of pleasure, you find yourself searching for threads of the band you've become the band you've become accustomed to. You're dancing in your bedroom and wonder who the fuck are these people and how did they get into my house? ' Dance and disco is favoured over freneticism and guitar. It's engaging but it lacks something . The Yeah Yeah Yeahs are intent on crashing the Dancehall but is it really them? Well, the anwser is yes. 'It's Blitz' has the somber and mutrure sound of 'Show Your Bones' cut in with vintage synths mirror-balls and disco-pop.
The album’s got heart, real, colorful, bleeding, stomping heart, and it’s laid out in soaring fashion. The beauty's in the details, and they love it that way. It's hard not to be intoxicated by the soaring vintage synths and Karen O's dirty dancehall banshee vocals. The lyrics are still raw, edgy and sometimes just fucking heartbreakingly beautiful such as in Skeleton, Hysteric or Runaway which rival 'Maps' or 'Turn Into' for sheer emotional rawness. Runaway especially with it's spine-tingling piano cords and Karen O's dove-like cooing and pleading repetitions. It's in the tumbling and stabbing bass of 'Dull Life' and 'Shame Fortune' you find your feet with a return to traditional form. The triumph is in tracks 'Zero', 'Dragon Queen', and 'Heads Will Roll'. These sound as blinding, sensual digital assaults on the dance-floor should. Even in the gentler 'Soft Shock' the chiming synth& a whirling electronics twist and pull at your limbs.
I'm no musical journalist despite my pretensions here. The truth is this album will put you out of place and trap itself in your skull, on repeat. Those Yankee bastards.
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