Yeah Yeah Yeahs -- Mosquito

Not sure what to think of this album. A lot of the songs kind of passed me by which is unusual for them.

The last three songs are the highlights, Always in particular is incredible and one of the best things they've ever done.

Have they released a version of "Sacrilege" that isn't remixed by Foster The People yet?

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/magazine/get-yer-yeah-yeah-yeahs-out.html?ref=music&_r=0

Big article in Sunday NY Times (lots of history of the group and descriptions of their personalities,not much about new album)

You’ve never met three more awkward rock stars. Chase is a consummate music nerd, a conservatory-trained jazz drummer who still plays in the city’s experimental scene. Zinner, who looks the part of a rock star, is a regular at bars and other bands’ shows but doesn’t say much. And Karen O is an exhibitionistic Boo Radley, a warped dervish onstage who disappears after the encore and is rarely seen out in real life. What they have in common is a hypersensitivity to the world that borders on pathological — a near parody of the artist’s temperament. It sounds like a miserable way to live.

The fall of 2000 felt like end times for rock ’n’ roll in New York City. On the radio it was all boy bands and Britney Spears, and there hadn’t been a vital rock scene since punk in the 1970s. But on a Sunday night at a tiny club in Lower Manhattan, something was happening.

man

so she dresses like JC Chasez for The NYT Magazine

well this was all quite underwhelming on one listen :/

yeah it's really not very good... "wedding song" is amazing tho

(idk if the "320kbps" version out there is actually HQ? it didn't sound very HQ)

didn't really notice anything partic amazing after "sacrilege" although the master tapes of whichever one has the rap on it need to be burned in a fire

lol james murphy produced that one

Musically, I like that one a lot. I can't even fathom why anyone thought it was a good idea to insert Dr. Octagon into it.

It's grown on me after a few listens but yeah it's a bit of a disappointment after It's Blitz. I really like Subway now but still it's all about the last three songs which are probably the most similar to the slower songs on the last album.

haven't followed them closely since the first album, but live in fall 2001 was my "oh, there's a future rock star" moment.

Ha ha I love that lex had to listen to dr.octagon

The appearance of Dr. Octagon kind of reinforces my initial impression of this as feeling like a low-key Karen O side project rather than a fully-formed YYYs album. Like, very little of it was actively bad but there's not much that stands out either.

I can't even fathom why anyone thought it was a good idea to insert Dr. Octagon into it.

It's probably what happens when your lead singer will collaborate with anything that's not nailed down and therefore presumably bumps into Dan The Automator on a regular basis.

maybe keith provided the dudes in the band with some of his professional escorts

Are rappers ever welcome on non-rap albums? Has anybody ever been happy to hear KRS-One/Q-Tip/Lil Wayne squeezed into an already busy song? Seems like one of those things bands keep trying even though it never works

Kool Thing and Anthrax/Public Enemy are about the only ones i really enjoy...

rappers can be pretty welcome on pop and dance albums

Yeah rappers on pop and R&B records are fine but that's usually because they've got the right kind of beat to work with. It sometimes works on dance albums but more often that not it's a bit clunky. Most post-2000 rock bands know to steer well clear of a guest rap verse because the results are nearly always terrible.

Didn't stop REM deciding it was a good idea for the second time, despite the world having spent the previous 15 years laughing at 'Radio Song'.

in fairness some of us were just laughing at KRS-One

what are u sayin
what are u playin
day after day after day after dayin
baby baby baby baby BA-BAY
MAN THAT STUFF IS DRIVIN ME CRA-ZAY

This is such an ugly album

Kind of reminds me of M.I.A.'s Maya a bit; a potentially interesting work suffocated by sketchy songs that try to mask their sketchiness with harsh production

The MAYA production BOOMED though. It sounded great in cars.

If it sounds like MAYA, I'm guessing I'll be horribly disappointed in it immediately, then spin it on a whim two years later and think "holy shit, this is pretty great!"

MAYA is really good

So has anyone really got into this album yet? I'm on my fifth listen and it's just not grabbing me enough. It's their first really patchy album, I think I really only rate four or five songs on here. I'm kinda bummed out about this.

I guess the only good part is at least I don't have to have that artwork in my collection now.

it's kinda funny how all the music people i follow on twitter have just...stopped talking about this

I haven't heard it yet, but it's really that bad!? Shit!

it's not BAD bad (apart from that one rap track), it just sounds like a bunch of demos. you go "oh" and you move on

Yeah it's not terrible just kind of boring which isn't something you could really say about them before. It does sound a little rushed too and unfinished too. The last three tracks are really beautiful but by then it's a bit too late.

i don't even think they're that special, though i've never been as enamoured of YYYs ballads as most - i think karen o is at her most compelling when she's being fierce, not soppy, and the soppiness only works as a counterpoint to the fierceness (and here there's not a great deal of the latter)

weird given how great "sacrilege" was

my YYYs challop is that "maps" is the least essential song on their debut

"hysteric" is nice but it was certainly overrated in all the it's blitz talk, too

i definitely think if you prefer "maps" to "bang" or "date with the night" there is SOMETHING WRONG WITH YOU

The ballads are what made It's Blitz for me. Softshock and Little Shadow are probably my two favourite songs on there. Not sure if they would be classed as ballads but Turns Into and Cheated Hearts are my favourite songs on the second album. I guess I just like the softer side of their music. On the new album the songs that I really don't like are the ones like the title track which sounds like a reject from the first album.

Maps will always be one of my favourites as it was the song that really got me into them, they do have a few better songs though.

yeah look someone who sings the praises of sacrilege and is then like "oh maps is not really essential at all" does not get the same things out of this band as i do

every banger on it's blitz except "zero" is better than every ballad

"heads will roll", "dull life" and "dragon queen" made that album for me

"maps" was better when kelly clarkson turned it into "since u been gone"

was gonna start listing my favourite songs on it's blitz and then realised i had about 6, it's such a great record.

kinda feel like sacrilege has a very similar chord progression to dull life except dull life has the bit where it speeds up, i'm more into that then plunging into full-on gospel choir

anyway i still haven't heard the new one yet. is there a listenable version out there?

xpost Yeah It's Blitz is by far my favourite album of theirs, there isn't a song I don't like.

It's streaming now, not sure if it's much better than the leak though.

http://www.gigwise.com/news/80722/listen-yeah-yeah-yeahs-stream-new-album-mosquito-on-youtube

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-54jXoS8pqP4/UBrI5NisAnI/AAAAAAAAAJI/Ye6_1eSfKkw/s1600/offspring+-+americana.jpg

Soft Shock isn't really a ballad imo. It's house tempo for one thing.

i definitely think if you prefer "maps" to "bang" or "date with the night" there is SOMETHING WRONG WITH YOU

OTM

I really like both sides of their songwriting - Karen O's cooing Chrissie Hyde impression is one of my favourite sounds in rock music and as important as when she sounds like she and the band are about to claw your face off. The definitely got better at blending those two elements over time though, up until now at least.

Listening to this - I like it much more than IB - that was some kind of glammy dance confection - this is less overt but more interesting to me. Only tune I don't really like is Sacrelige. I suspect that those who really dug IB as the best YYY album may not like this because it is more subtle and less about the glaring flashing lights.