emulation project, article 1

In the Studio

Inside the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s Rural Retreat

Album - It’s Blitz
Due Out -April
Producers - Nick Launay, Dave Sitek

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs were huddled over hot cocoa and roasting chestnuts in rural Massachusetts barn-turned-studio when they wrote “Zero” – a synth-charged dance-floor anthem that became the linchpin for their third full-length album, It’s Blitz. “I feel like my Karen O persona was born on the dance floor, so I really started playing around with that kind of stuff,” says the singer. “It’s purely feel-good song, and it’s impossible not to want to dance to it. For three days after we wrote ‘Zero,’ I was high because of that song.”
The boost of energy provided by “Zero” galvanized the trio and helped them move past the melancholy vibe of their previous album, 2006’s Show Your Bones. “That record felt so dark in many, many ways,” says guitarist Nick Zinner. “We were happy and thankful not to go back to that place.” The uptempo groove continue on “Heads Will Roll,” where O chants, “Off, off, off with you head!/Dance, dance, dance till you’re dead,” over a massive bass line and an orchestral synth sample. Even the weepers are sort of energizing: “Skeletons” and “Soft Shock” both crescendo from lullaby to rallying cry in under five minutes. “The new songs have an uplifting quality that we’ve never had before,” says Zinner.
For the first time, the band members recorded outside their hometowns – O lives in Los Angeles, Zinner and drummer Brian Chase in New York. Besides working in Massachusetts, the trio camped out for several weeks at a 1,700-acre pecan orchard in Tornillo, Texas, with producer Nick Launay (he helmed the YYYs’ 2007 Is Is EP). “We wanted to go somewhere where we could be detached in our own little word,” says O. (They also worked for a few weeks in Brooklyn with TV on the Radio’s Dave Sitek.) The process, Zinner says, ended up being the band’s most collaborative record yet. “It was all three of us working together, unless someone wanted to be left alone,” says the guitarist. “We were all up in each other’s shit.”
In the end, O is satisfied that the group came up with an album that will surprise and please its fans. “We’re always gonna have Yeah Yeah Yeahs hooks and energy,” says O. “But we came up with something new that we’ve never heard before from ourselves. Less angst and more positivity, man!”