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Review: Yeah Yeah Yeahs It's Blitz!

(The) Yeah Yeah Yeahs have been a favourite of Eyewear's since at least spring 2006, when, three years ago, they launched their second full album, Show Your Bones. It was one of the best of that year.

Now here they are, seeing out this decade of boom and bust with an electro-punk work - Britishly-titled, It's Blitz! - that joyously combines the best of late Blondie, Bow Wow Wow, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and, now and then, OMD - which is to say, it's a pop-disco-new wave mix - not a million miles from the sort of Goldfrapp stuff on their middle albums. What's not to like? Well, Adorno fans will slink away from the dancefloor immediately - this is not art, it is brutally entertaining diversion.

Of course, bands have been mining the 80s for most of the 00s, so nothing here seems like an entirely new move - but Karen O is on form, and, in almost every song, improves on her trademark New Yoik yearning vocals. On just a few listens, I already love it - it puts recent releases by Britney, or Madonna, if not to shame, then in the shade. It is also much less worthy, hard work, or dull-dense than that recent U2. The best songs are everywhere, but here are the five standout tracks, to these ears: "Zero", "Heads Will Roll", "Soft Shock", "Dull Life" and "Hysteric" - but each song has managed to fuse sexy new wave menace and contemporary in-yer-face bravado. This one is Five Specs out of Five Specs.
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