Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Mosquito

So the last in my trio of millenium-debutant indie giants' 2013 releases comes from my dearly-beloved Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Following in the wake of a spate of guest appearances (Santigold's Go; The Flaming Lips; David Lynch)  and soundtracking (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo; Where the Wild Things Are), Karen O is faced with the gauntlet of presenting something fresh and exciting as a frontwoman 10 years down the line from their glorious debut. It's a little bit of a face-saving move, really, following the slightly failed attempts to become crossover artists with their poppier 2009 release It's Blitz! They may have been covered by Glee, but they weren't quite covered with sales.

Still, the charts' loss is our gain. Album #4 finds the Yeahs embracing a wacky side, if that wasn't made abundantly clear by the terribly unappealing artwork. I'm trying to find positives but everything - the garish font, the weirdly plastic child, and that hair - just screams "no!" at me. But like an unwelcome sleep spasm, it soon passes and we're in cosy and familiar territory again.

From the off, O's vocals bark and whine and purr with her typical schizophrenic ease on first single 'Sacrilege', a track so ambitious it required a Nolan-style twisty video with supermodel Lily Cole raunching it up to do it justice. It builds and builds, with a slightly worrying precision and sheen, and even climaxes with a gospel choir; but then the New York trio have never been ones for subtlety. It's a strong opener, but could do with a little better chorus than repeating the title 12 times, you say. Far more naturally beguiling is the hypnotic train-track loop on 'Subway', a breathy, hushed number that's just immensely gratifying. It might be the break from its serenity that makes me object to the title track so vehemently, but otherwise I can find little, in the kind-of standard rock and roll structure of 'Mosquito', that begs to be heard again. If its intention is to make us sit up and listen, it's only out of the disappointment that a band capable of much more is reduced to silly horror-rock hooks like "he'll suck your blood!"

Times arise though on Mosquito where the whole macabre side of music is wholly enjoyable: on 'Under the Earth', Karen O takes the mantle of burying former lovers with her curses ("Twelve times put a hex on you") whilst backed by an almost dancehall beat and decidedly metronomic basslines. Even more seductive on the breathy 'Slave', she revels as they "keep me on the throne/ heads down all day". But sometimes the shift to malicious and venomous songwriting is rather ineffective: the revenge fantasy 'These Paths' pulses with some threat but ultimately goes down without a fight, courtesy to some directionless synths and buzzing,  iritating percussions. The title to 'Area 52' ("let's go one further than that Roswell place, guys!" the band say in my sceptical imagination) suggests an obvious alien abduction theme and that's exactly what's delivered. Without much interest.

One example of them stretching out and getting truly weird though is on the collaboration with Kool Keith's avant timetravelling comic character Dr. Octagon on 'Buried Alive', a kind of industrial grower that implores us to "free yourself, that leash is long, long, long". For me, though, ever the hopeless romantic, her soppy side is much more appealing. Take 'Always', a straightforward message of devotion, and its Beach House-like haze. Sure, it's not exactly exciting, but it sets up the two classic YYYs closers finely. First, 'Despair' is a series of atmospheric instrumentals and repetitive lyrics ("my sun is your sun, your sun is our sun") that definitely recall the likes of Y Control and Maps. But more beautiful still is 'Wedding Song', where the spotlight's firmly on Karen O (she sang it at her wedding to director Barnaby Clay). "Some kind of violent bliss led me to love like this" she smiles, and it's a smile that's almost certainly audible. That kind of quality in music is always dear to me.

Were the band to have just gone and made a more conventional record I'd probably be raving and passionate about this, but the whole middle section with aliens and femmes fatale and bloodsuckers just struck me as a little too obvious for a band with much more eye-opening and attention-grabbing talents. Thankfully, their songwriting remains as sharp as ever, and Mosquito adds another heap of reasons to why they're a favourite band of mine.

Rating: 7/10
Highlights: Subway; Wedding Song; Slave; Buried Alive; Under the Earth
Avoid: Mosquito; These Paths; Area 52

Artwork Watch: Fucking hideous.
Up next: Rudimental