Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Mosquito scratches an itch

In the revival years of garage rock, no one screeched without inhibition quite like Karen O. Flanked by the equally raucous duo of Nick Zinner (on guitar and keyboard) and Brian Chase (drums), O fronted the rise of Yeah Yeah Yeahs into stardom based on the band’s ability to do as it pleased.

 

Now on its fourth studio album, the band understands what to do to get attention — take, for instance, the members’ eye-catching fashions or the band’s controversial cover of a baby being grabbed by a giant mosquito. But Yeah Yeah Yeahs also knows how to create a signature sound to keep its fan base growing.

Mosquito feels a little calmer than previous albums, but maybe that’s because the band now has little to prove. Listeners have consistently gotten serious doses of O’s fantastic, often hysterical vocals, especially in the 2003 album Fever to Tell. From the start of the band, fans couldn’t escape the crunchy riffs, swift changes in tempo and risky melodies that accompanied the songs and the rest of their albums.

So it almost makes sense that Mosquito sounds mostly atmospheric. It’s a chilled-out version of the band, for the most part. The exceptions include zany title tracks that load tons of fun into somewhat creepy lines about — you guessed it — YYY’s favorite bug, the mosquito. O whispers creepily at the listener from the beginning, later talking about the mosquito’s freaky abilities. “They can you see / but you can’t see them,” she informs the listener in a slick breakdown. “Were you itching when they called your name?”

O even starts buzzing during some parts of the song, and the guitar puts out riff after riff, heightening the tension of the whole track. It might just be a song about a small creature, but the whimsy is there and the musicality is on point.

The fun continues in “Area 52,” which takes on aliens. As O sings, another digital voice sings along, blending in with the melody. “Take me as your prisoner / I wanna be an alien,” O pleads as Chase drives the rhythm with a solid set of drum beats.

But any diehard YYY fan knows the band can do softer, calmer songs with just as much finesse. The more melancholy tones of O’s voice shine on “Despair,” which uses a simple rhythm with a repetitive melody that O manipulates with emotional changes in pitch. Eventually, Chase brings in a few resonant drum beats and the guitars amp up in noise but the song structure still feels simple. It’s pulled off effortlessly, yet the sentiment feels sincere.

“Subway” gets more abstract in its sound, with the initial beat imitating the move of a train over the tracks. O’s layered voice made the reverb even richer. The song’s rhythm doesn’t work as well though, with the sound of the tracks getting more and more overwhelming as the song nears its end.

The track doesn’t grab your attention as much as others on the album, but if YYY fans yearned for a slightly different sound than presented in previous albums, they can find it here. They just need to realize their ears might be subjected to the incessant sound of train wheels on tracks for more than a minute.

Though “Always” takes its time ending — not to mention getting the word “always” stuck in the listener’s head — the track descent into a flurry of light keyboard notes with resounding bass notes makes it feels more mellow than other, more prototypical YYY tracks. At the same time though, it plays to the band’s strength to show off its ability to create grungy, fast-tempoed tracks in addition to more pensive ones.

Yet the song structure doesn’t feel like it has a risk to it. The song’s melody at the beginning repeats throughout the song, which makes it start to feel expected. That changes however, when the melody leads up to an electronic-heavy outro that distorts O’s voice so that it almost sounds like the playing of keyboard notes. It’s intriguing for some time but feels unnecessary as O has the vocal chops to impress without the need of technological manipulation.

Surprising at turns, disappointing at some but overall reassuring, Mosquito does not fully represent the unbridled talent and fantastically quirky talent of the trio. It proves refreshing in its new approach but the band need not lag their songs so much. After all, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs always shine brightest — like arguably all garage rock bands do, no matter the era — when their music is quick and dirty.