When I Paint My Masterpiece...

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs are evolving into the jet plane age of American Smooth

I've never been that much into the triple Y.

Then I saw the video for Zero. Gladwrapped, Ramones groupie clad, shopping cart cruisin' (in 2009! Guts!) Karen O - the only true Madonna of the real screeching punky Riot Grrrly-girlish electroclash - delivering an album strong as this even after the genre itself has vanished and dried up being nothing but a new monotonous Ladytron album recycling the same cliches every once in a while.

The strength of this record lies, besides a kick-ass cover, in a less punky, more songwriting based approach and dancewise production. I already mentioned this year's strongest single, the epic feet mover Zero. Heads Will Roll is almost as tempting, with its sexy chorus, cricket menace synths, hungry sounding back beat of cannibal drums and a string arrangement loop reminiscent of Gary Numan's Me. Ha! Original? No. Hooky? Yes.

There's also a quirky appeal in that very Yeah Yeah Yeahs type of signature sinisterism of Shame and Fortune, which, let's face it, sounds nothing but a chocolate bar commercial. YYY are well aware that a lackluster song without a substance can be turned into a moment of musical suspense when you add enough danger into it. Alas, the ballads are a drag, lacking the aforementioned aspect. Loaded with strong emotion, but musically so very uninteresting. Runaway and Little Shadow are completely worthless, while Hysteric has a potential lost with the old fashioned production. Makes me think of present day U2 trying to play girl pop.

And oh yes, there's Dragon Queen (the tittle? Again, guts! Love you Karen). It's a fascinating attempt to duplicate the glam sexy Johnny Jewel type "Italo meets minimalism" dark disco, the result being something much more organic, retroish and original, sounding like something from a James Bond versus Saturday Night Fever double feature from the seventies.

All in all: It's Blitz! is not a perfect record, but a nostalgic trip back to the millennial times, where the new wave of indie wasn't something idiotic and a bunch of kids stopped dwelling in escathologic depression and traded their unwashed jeans for plastic and lipstick. Naturally all this sounds a bit dated today, but so does every record of artistic maturation. See, there's a difference between artistic growth and being artistically mature. The first is when you release your second album which is praised in unison, latter is when the critics think you're a relic but the actual audience has been growing with the artist and consider your release incredibly strong. It's like they've made their own Blood On The Tracks.

As a post scriptum I must add that I do like Ladytron, but for a band taking their tittle from a Roxy Music song they should pay more attention to artistic variety. It sounds like mockery. I bet I will soon hear it is mockery, irony, a tribute, what ever...

Yeah Yeah Yeahs: It's Blitz
(Interscope, 2009)
Record rating: 8.5/10

Bob Dylan: Blood On The Tracks
(Columbia 1974)
Record rating: 9.0/10