The Yeah Yeah Yeahs' third proper album was released March 2009 to little fanfare. I love this band. That notwithstanding, back in March, I decided to write about this particular record, as I encountered each song, as objectively as possible. With this band, objectivity is a feat of which I am not entirely capable. Either way, here it is, a track-by-track review of a good record by a great band.
Track 1: “Zero”
The first track, and potential massive radio hit, fronts a propulsive yet stagnant, Jacob’s ladder rhythm with metronomic synthesizers (!) and a Blondie-esque layer of noise. The first verse pauses dramatically with room to spare and launches into a heavy narrative that can’t help but coalesce into a entrancing crescendo. As good as it sounds it ends up sounding a bit ostentatious. Okay, very ostentatious.
Track 2: “Heads Will Roll”
Singer Karen O, sounding like a sexy tyrant here, promises an apocalyptic downtown scene, “dripping with alchemy”, if you don’t do as she says. Alchemy, folks, is the philosophical search for ultimate wisdom and immortality. The lyrics command that you dance yourself to your death in utter ecstasy. The music, on the other hand, says that you should do cocaine with a stranger and blow someone in exchange for said cocaine. This track is high on style but a clear weak point of the album.
Track 3: “Soft Shock”
There is more synth here that layers a placid pipe dream with a very ghostly coda. “Leave me,” Karen cracks, almost daring us to doubt her. This song displays a stark contrast to the first two tracks in that it displays an unmistakable, sing-songy humanity. “Soft Shock” is contemplative and somewhat honest in the same vein of the Clash’s “Lost in the Supermarket”.
Track 4: “Skeletons”
One of a couple of lullabies on the record, this one that can best be described as having an eerie ceiling fan pattern. This could possibly be a companion piece to “Soft Shock”. Instead of daring us to leave her, now she is just plain leaving. “Love left dry/love, don’t cry/skeleton me,” would be distinctly at home in the end credits of a sweeping love story, not to mention that it has a similar aesthetic to, of all things, “Free Bird”. While it’s pretty damned good on its’ own, with its loose cadence and hip-shaking underbelly, the song is begging to be remixed and mashed up into a dance floor dirge. But as an open-air composition it breathes like a limbo. What it really needs, what it waits for, longs for, is a “Phenomenon”-like breakdown somewhere near the end of its build up (See 2006’s “Show Your Bones” for further reference).
Track 5: “Dull Life”
The band speaks here of simple mistakes and a famous Greek aphorism. According to the band, “Know thyself” is the credo that frees you from a “Dull Life”. Lies, beasts, nightmares, a long life capped with iron bars…these are the hallmarks of the title’s namesake. The guitar takes a backseat here during the verses but it stays lockstep with the vocals almost throughout, syllable by syllable. Karen’s angular vocals take center stage, mimicking a life-support heart monitor, or perhaps a vigorous flogging. This, the most rock-oriented song on the record, is on a mission: hit bottom and the truth shall be revealed. It’s also a bit of a barn-burner with Karen yarling about a life more ordinary. When she preaches, “Know myself”, it comes out like she’s teaching the mirror to “Know my soul”. But really, what’s the difference?
Track 6: “Shame and Fortune”
And then there’s a duel. The band squares off with each other here, or maybe with the whole world, to argue about…something. A bit pedestrian at the start, the nucleus of this tune spreads like a cancer; it is a landscape that sounds forbidding and forbidden. The message: shame is a mirage while all fortune is temporary. I’m not sure what it’s supposed to mean; maybe just to get back on the dance floor. Or back to the cocaine. Or neither.
Track 7: “Runaway”
Beginning with a lonely piano introduction and a mantra (“Don’t keep looking back/I always flew by/Run, run away/No sense of time/I’d like you to stay/Like to keep you inside”), “Runaway” sounds like a cautionary tale. Karen O’s vocals are simply angelic here. She is still composing within a plane of late night harangues and early morning escapes. For everyone but her, this may not be a bad thing.
This track is a burgeoning last stand with a meandering bridge and a pleading, desperate tone.
As Karen sings, “Not that strong…” over and over I can’t help but feel this would have been more useful as a closing track. But it doesn’t matter. Even as a stand-alone, this song is the most vulnerable, and by that device it is the most tender. It evokes what is beautiful and alone in all of us. Oh alright…MOST of us.
Track 8: “Dragon Queen”
“My mouth/you’re touchin’/your mouth/is runnin’” takes us back to the bathroom with the coke, and perhaps, back to the early eighties. What is it about Karen’s vocals that make her moaning tolerable? This is more Olivia Newton John than Blondie.
Track 9: “Hysteric”
Here is where, despite the quality of the album as a whole, the ponderousness becomes a bit nauseating; albeit, this is where the narrative comes to its inevitable, romantic conclusion. The “Karen” character becomes aware that she is incomplete and reaches out with, “Flow sweetly/hang heavy,” before confessing, “You, suddenly, complete me”.
No telling if the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s are making fun of us here. File this under Simple Minds.
Track 10: “Little Shadow”
It doesn’t matter at this point. You either die alone, or you don’t. Maybe it didn’t work out betwixt “Karen” and whoever. All things considered, this is a lonely yet hopeful epilogue, with Karen, or “Karen”, questioning someone. Maybe you. “Will you follow me?” she asks.
It’s probably a good idea to follow. Who knows what comes next?
And so on.
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