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This is oddly spot on for Pitchfork. I agree with everything – it does feels like they attempted to go back to their routes but got lost along the way. ‘Sacrilege’ is by far the best song on the album, whereas majority of the rest sounds like a re-creation of ground already covered. Yeah Yeah Yeahs Mosquito Interscope; 2013 6.0 There's a refrain you often hear about bands running on the sort of quick-burning demon energy that the Yeah Yeah Yeahs were channeling in the early part of the last decade: You had to be there. But on rare occasions, a band will make a record so thick with atmosphere that "being there" is just a matter of pushing play. Yeah Yeah Yeahs' 2003 debut, Fever to Tell, is one of those achievements: Even if you didn't make it to one of the infamous early New York shows and have the pleasure of getting your glasses sprinkled with the beery spit of a grinning, lipstick-smeared frontwoman in tattered Christian Joy, the record itself did a commendable job of bottling that experience. It was a debut that aced music's classic chemistry lesson: Combine a few unlikely, molten compounds, take a step back, and wait for the bang. When they put out their second album, it seemed, at least at the time, like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs were growing up too fast. Show Your Bones favored songcraft over shambolic energy, and sounded disappointingly tame on the heels of Fever's maniacal night-sweats. (It was also the beginning of a creative schism in the band; as Zinner told Spin in 2006, "I didn't want to write and record in a studio... I just wanted to do demos on a four-track in somebody's apartment." He lost that argument.) But in the long run, Bones has aged remarkably well, and now feels like a pivotal moment in the band's arc, setting the tone for a career of evolution, reinvention, and constant forward motion; 2009’s excellent It's Blitz! was a record of glammy, neo-Blondie avant-pop, staying true to their quirks but successfully expanding their range. Mosquito, the group's fourth record, is its first step backwards. It feels uncharacteristic, calling to mind a lot of words that have never fit this band before: confused, dreary, uninspired, and-- on one particularly baffling song about aliens-- uncool. Karen may have bleached her hair electric blonde and donned some inspired, tinselly Elvis suits, but for once the band hasn't applied a similarly gleeful spirit of reinvention to its sound. Instead, Mosquito aims for more of a back-to-basics approach. "We have this shitty little downtown studio [in New York] that belongs to us," Karen said in a recent Pitchfork interview, "so we wrote songs and recorded demos whenever we felt inspired; it was kind of like Fever to Tell and our first demo." But the often limp Mosquito lacks their earlier material's spark. Mosquito is not without highlights, but it requires some patience to unearth them, because when this record is bad, it's loudly, brazenly bad. "Area 52" is probably the lowest point in the band's catalog; its lyrics have a Spinal Tap syntax ("Message came from outer space/ Future of the human race") that makes it play like self-parody. The song also features an uncharacteristically wooden vocal from Karen, who's eventually drowned out by a wash of spacey blips and bleeps. At least she sounds like she's having a little more fun with "Mosquito", but even her trademark charisma can't inject a sting into the weak chorus ("They'll suck your blood! They'll suck your blood!" she tries, over and over). It's surprising how off the mark these songs sound coming from a band who used to be able to do goofy well. The upbeat songs on Fever careened with a wobbly, inebriated energy, but whenever Mosquito aims for "zany" or "light," it teeters around like an exhibitionist "drunk" on non-alcoholic beer. "Mosquito" should have been a B-side at best, but the fact that it's the title track-- and the inspiration for the garish, David-Cronenberg-vomiting-on-a-Garbage-Pail-Kids-card cover art-- makes it that much harder to ignore. That a thin, overly literal song like "Mosquito" is at the center of the artistic statement they're trying to make only makes this album more of a head-scratcher. Whatever's holding this collection of songs together never quite congeals-- a problem exemplified by the James Murphy-produced "Buried Alive", a moody, nocturnal groove interrupted halfway through by a verse from Dr. Octagon (the high-concept, time-traveling alien persona of avant-rap legend Kool Keith) that lands in the song with a heavy thud. On repeated listens, though, a few diamonds emerge in the rough. Built around Zinner's expectant single-note riff, the gradual crescendo of "Despair" plays like a more muted take on Show Your Bones' best single, "Cheated Hearts", though its refrain is even more poignant. "Oh despair, you've always been there," Karen sings with the perfect combination of exhaustion and defiance, "You were there through my wasted years... there through my wasted life." The closing track, "Wedding Song" (which Karen sang to her husband Barney Clay at their 2011 wedding reception) sounds a bit like a happy-ending sequel to "Maps", brooding with a similar emotional intensity ("In flames I sleep soundly/ With angels around me"). But the most promising-- and perhaps only truly new-- avenue the band wanders down on Mosquito is "Subway", a subtle, evocative sound collage driven by Karen's falsetto and the percussive churn of a train on the track. It's heavy on conceptual follow-through and finely crafted atmosphere on a record where both are in short supply. On their best and most smartly sequenced albums, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs create a sense that their bratty swagger and disarming vulnerability were emanating from the same power source. In the wake of Fever's amped-up "Date With the Night" or "Tick", "Maps" feels like an inevitable come-down, but the songs on Mosquito don't feed off each other in the same way. The album's most keyed-up moment comes early, in the solid lead-off single "Sacrilege", but when a gospel choir storms the song's closing coda it feels unprompted-- this is a band that used to be able to kindle the same kind of fire from the minimal components of its own chemistry. Still, even if Mosquito suggests otherwise, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' much-lauded SXSW showing and recent homecoming performances in New York prove that magic can still happen for them on stage. Maybe now you just have to be there.

Other than me, you and Randomfurlong... Probably not. Their loss.

OH GOD. x2

JMJwcOiBoZE :wub:

Agree with all of this really. The first few episodes were some of the best TV I've seen, but it all went a bit haywire after the interrogation episode. They just need to lock Howard Gordon away so he can relive 24 on his own.

I've been more skeptical than excited about their return but that clip sounds like a contender for song of the summer. I've had it in my head all day. So catchy.

It really does sound fantastic, especially the infectious little riff. Apparently it premieres on Monday.

3ejWq9RR7Ec#! YESS Sounds good.

2004 08 Kanye West - Through The Wire 09 Kanye West feat. Syleena Johnson - All Falls Down 07 Brandy feat. Kanye West - Talk About Our Love 10 Kanye West - Jesus Walks 2005 10 Kanye West - Diamonds From Sierra Leone 09 Kanye West feat. Jamie Foxx - Gold Digger 05 Kanye West feat. Adam Levine - Heard Em' Say 2006 03 Rhymefest feat. Kanye West - Brand New 10 Kanye West feat. Lupe Fiasco - Touch The Sky 02 Jamie Foxx feat. Kanye West - Extravaganza 05 Pharrell feat. Kanye West - Number One 04 Ghostface Killah feat. Ne-Yo & Kanye West - Back Like That 2007 08 Kanye West - Stronger 05 Kanye West feat. T-Pain - Good Life 2008 07 Kanye West - Homecoming 05 Estelle feat. Kanye West - American Boy 11 Kanye West feat. Dwele - Flashing Lights 07 Jay-Z feat. Kanye West & Lil' Wayne - Swagga Like Us 09 Kanye West - Love Lockdown 07 Kanye West - Heartless 2009 04 Keri Hilson feat. Ne-Yo & Kanye West - Knock You Down 04 Mr Hudson feat. Kanye West - Supernova 06 Jay-Z feat. Rihanna & Kanye West - Run This Town 04 Kid Cudi feat. Kanye West & Common - Make Her Say 06 Drake feat. Kanye West, Lil' Wayne & Eminem - Forever 2010 09 Kanye West - Power 10 Kanye West feat. Pusha T - Runaway 2011 07 Kanye West & Jay-Z - H*A*M 10 Kanye West feat. Various Artists - All Of The Lights 07 Katy Perry feat. Kanye West - E.T. 09 Jay-Z & Kanye West feat. Otis Redding - Otis 06 Jay-Z & Kanye West feat. Beyonce - Lift Off 2012 10 Jay-Z & Kanye West - N****s In Paris 09 Jay-Z & Kanye West feat. Frank Ocean - No Church In The Wild 07 Kanye West, Jay-Z & Big Sean - Clique 2013 05 Kanye West, Big Sean, Pusha T & 2 Chainz - Mercy :wub:

AlaRjP8pg0Q :wub: Didn't expect to be enjoying this album more than Shaking the Habitual...

pKqrlFo2LNI !!!

Has anyone watched Hannibal yet? Worth a shot?

Melodies falling out of my ears.

Wow. This is fantastic. Who knew? It's not that different to the debut (which wasn't all that really) but somehow takes everything from it and turns it up a notch.

There is a difference between reinventing yourself and looking desperate as you attempt to jump onto a bandwagon. However, Madonna has perfected that recently too.

Hey Porsche is bloody awful. It must be horrible attempting to stay relevant by ditching whatever sound you have and releasing the most generic trash that fits in with whatever is going around at the time.

Tropical Chancer sounds like Ace of Base. I like.

Ugh. Pixar. I'm shaking my head.

I really want to hear what Dandy thinks about this.

Pliers. That is all.

Imagine hearing all of these songs together for the first time?

I FORGOT THE DATE. Awful.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/529cac31383bfdac7519d44651988bf4/tumblr_mkjv2jfQge1qebqrfo1_1280.jpg April 8th.

36S1cgEW9bk This looks genuinely good. Colour me shocked.