Consumer Guide Album

Yeah Yeah Yeahs: It's Blitz! [Interscope, 2009]
The more Karen O makes like a disco dolly, the less we're obliged to believe she's a person. She's just a hell of a cartoon, swooping and suffering and s&ming all over her brand of new synth sonics--Gary Numan, Placebo, Lady GaGa, anything for a thrill (except the electro-shoegaze "Runaway"). Dig the art-rock pompadour "Skeletons," where Nick Zinner rips off an excellent bagpipes impression. Even the now-obligatory vulnerable one, where Karen tries to prove she's not only human but nice, is . . . well, not a cartoon, but at least a bedtime story. A-