Yeah Yeah Yeah’s “It’s Blitz”

May I take this opportunity to introduce to you a band from New York that you only think you know of…

When I saw Crystal Castles for the first time last year, performing at Glastonbury festival (alas, only televised), I remember thinking to myself “This is a interesting proposition… a dance band trying to replicate some of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ anger, muddy sound and phenomenal front-woman’s ability to tear up (and down) the stage.” Things have come full circle. Listening to “It’s Blitz,” I think to myself, “This is an interesting proposition… a guitar band trying to replicate Crystal Castle’s dark electronica and dance-laden pacing, with overdriven synths and drums mixed with drum-machines.”

It really is a good idea.

I want to speak to some of the numerous naysayers of “It’s Blitz,” because I’ve come across a lot, and I don’t want to just dismiss them. In fact, I have a lot of sympathy with their disappointment with this album. There were few who were bigger fans of the two albums and an EP that this band’s previous incarnation put out than me. When I first heard “It’s Blitz” I did feel sad not to hear that kind of sound again. So much less guitar here from Nick, so much less live drums from Brian.

photo by Kirstie Shanley

But I ask those who have seen “It’s Blitz” as the beginning of the band’s demise this question: What have you lost which can’t still be celebrated in listening to “Fever to Tell,” “Show Your Bones,” or “Is is” again? Luckily for us, all those recordings are set in stone, but the band (also luckily for us) is not so static. “It’s Blitz” doesn’t steal the old music away, and it does give us, yet again, something fresh to listen to at every turn.

This is why it’s perhaps less painful to the hardened Yeah Yeah Yeahs fans, like myself, to disregard what similarities do still exist, and meet this new band on their own terms. This album – “It’s Blitz” – is dark, energetic, sometimes touching, sometimes tongue-in-check. It’s a set of songs that, like the music of a great band called the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (from a couple of years ago) seem full of vitality. Don’t let that pass you by because you love them too much to let them grow.

Filed under: Matters Musical & Artistic

Ghost of the Russian Empire’s “The Mammoth”

No-one ever said I was timely in my reviews. Austin’s Ghost of the Russian Empire released their “The Mammoth” album in the middle of last year, and it fell through the cracks for me. So this review is an apology, to Ghost, for my (quite literal) ignorance

“The Mammoth” is an album shrouded in mystery. Ghost use so much reverb on most of their tracks that everything has a cloudy, lost feel to it. Vocals, in particular, drift past you incomprehensibly, swathed in ringing echoes of themselves. This is compounded with the dearth of information on the band (their ‘website’ is just a picture of the album cover – a cleverly engineered mystique?), and you start to wonder if Ghost are obscure, or obscured.

My comments may make it sound like “The Mammoth” is one big studio mishap, but here I feel sure Ghost are entirely in control of their direction. They claim a deep affiliation with Radiohead, but I don’t see it. Nonetheless, their album has some of the deep warmth of BRMC’s “Take them on, On Your Own,” some of the swagger, in songs like the excellent “Bleeding Machines,” of Kasabian’s eponymous first album (particularly tracks like “Reason is Treason”) – rolling bass is the only element you can hang onto while the song wheels around you.

So I highly recommend Ghost of the Russian Empire. They play dark music you can sink into, and sink your teeth into.

[Nick also writes for Nick Sounds Off and Ryan's Smashing life.]

Filed under: Matters Musical & Artistic