It's Blitz! (2009)

It's Blitz! is the third studio album by American indie rock band Yeah Yeah Yeahs, released on March 6, 2009 on Interscope Records.

The album was produced by Nick Launay, who had worked with the band on their previous EP, Is Is (2007), and TV on the Radio's David Andrew Sitek, who had produced the band's debut album, Fever to Tell (2003). The album was supported by three singles, "Zero", "Heads Will Roll", and "Skeletons".

It's Blitz! received acclaim from music critics, and was nominated for Best Alternative Music Album at the 2010 Grammy Awards.

Recording

"When Yeah Yeah Yeahs guitarist Nick Zinner packed his bag for the band's trip to the studio…" wrote John Doran in Classic Rock, "he made a random decision that would completely change their direction. The vintage ARP synthesizer that he carried with him to the Tornillo studios in the west Texan desert was supposed to provide downtime entertainment, but ended up being the defining noise on It's Blitz!."

According to coproducer Nick Launay, the album was unusual for being largely written and created in the studio at a time when record labels had cut back considerably on production budgets. The few songs the band took to the first sessions were altered significantly.

Launay described a typical session: "Brian [Chase] would play lots of different drumbeats and we'd record it, chop it up and then make a groove loop out of it. Nick [Zinner] would then just jam to it, and we'd come up with an interesting rhythm part. Karen [O] would listen to that and come up with a vocal melody and then suddenly everything would fall into place."

During the sessions – which took place over several months in 2008 – there were numerous breaks "to get inspired".

Release

The album was originally planned to be released on April 14, 2009. However, the album was leaked to the Internet on February 22, causing it to be pushed forward to March 10 for the digital release and March 31 for the physical release.

Critical reception

It's Blitz! received universal acclaim from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an average score of 82 based on 36 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim". Heather Phares of AllMusic believed the band successfully departed from their established sound, writing that "between the violently happy songs and the softer ones, this is some of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' most balanced and cohesive music." Jon Pareles of The New York Times wrote that the band "grapple with separation and need, using dance beats to suggest the compulsive pleasure seeking that tries to drown out loneliness", and he commended their musical direction, stating, "The band is echoing the evolution of postpunk, from dogmatic austerity to technologically assisted".

Blender also gave the album four stars out of five and hailed it as "the sound of a band reborn with new momentum, and on an album that requires dancing, the message is clear: It doesn't matter where you came from. Just keep moving." Clash commented that the trio had grown without distancing themselves from what made their name: "The album proves that they can provide epic music with personal themes, that YYYs can expand without losing what made us fall for them in the first place". The Guardian's Caroline Sullivan declared the "glittery new disco sound suits them very well. It's all cool, brittle catchiness, with a debt owed to Eat to the Beat-era Blondie". Emily Mackay of NME wrote, "It's Blitz!'s heartfelt love letter to the transcendent possibilities of the dancefloor is an unexpectedly emphatic reassertion of why Yeah Yeah Yeahs are one of the most exciting bands of this decade." Mojo awarded it four stars out of five and wrote that the band "managed to mix the human and the electronic, the emotional and the artsy, the fashion-forward and the oddly retro."

Spin's Charles Aaron called it "the alternative pop album of the decade – one that imbues The Killers' Hot Fuss and MGMT's Oracular Spectacular with a remarkable emotional depth and finesse". Uncut's April Long scored it four out of five and praised its "spirit of experimentation", stating "What unifies them is a warm romanticism that runs throughout, edging out Karen's blatant eroticism of yore – even though there are more come-downs than come-ons, every song seems to glow from within". Theon Weber of The Village Voice said Karen O "isn't revealed to us through the record's lyrics, which are as gnomic as ever, but through attitudes, tones, put-on sneers, and audible grins."

Commercial performance

It's Blitz! debuted at number 32 on the Billboard 200, selling 13,000 digital copies in its first week. Following its physical release, the album climbed to a new peak position of number 22 in its fourth week on the chart, selling 22,000 copies. As of October 2009, it had sold 184,000 copies in United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan. The album entered the UK Albums Chart at number nine with first-week sales of 18,054 copies.