[rating=8.00]
This year marks the tenth anniversary of the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s breakthrough full-length Fever to Tell, the record that housed their biggest hit to date "Maps", which reached no. 6 on the Billboard Hot Modern Rock Tracks chart and landed in the Top 10 of countless music publications’ "Best Songs of the 2000s" lists handily.
It was the song that set the trio of singer Karen O, guitarist Nick Zinner and drummer Brian Chase apart from the hipster combustion of the New York City music scene that exploded during the first term of George W. Bush, showing promise to their staying power as a commercial entity beyond the bash-n-trash of the rhythmic art punk for which they are most renowned. And nearly a decade after they released the track to radio and MTV, the YYY’s have finally put forth an entire full-length that embodies the spirit of "Maps" through and through.
Recorded in London, New York City, Echo Park, CA and Tornillo, Texas with such high profile producers as Dave Sitek, the DFA’s James Murphy, legendary UK post-punk/new wave producer Nick Launay and longtime Yeahs associate Sam Spiegel (aka Squeak E. Clean), Mosquito is the Like A Prayer to Fever to Tell’s Like A Virgin, right up to the rousing gospel choir that roars at the coda of the explosive opening track "Sacrilege". It is, quite frankly, the best song they’ve ever recorded, a futuristic pop hosanna that leaves you breathless every time you play it. If released as a single and pumped with the same kind of marketing power Interscope gave to the Black Eyed Peas and Lady Gaga, it’ll go viral like the Bubonic Plague.
And though the rest of Mosquito doesn’t maintain the fever pitch of its first cut, these 11 tracks do benefit from the sense of fearlessness the trio exhibit throughout the course of the LP, from the excursions into dub on "Under the Earth" to throwing it back to Peepshow-era Siouxsie and the Banshees on the likes of "Slave" and "Despair" to the leftfield Dr. Octagon comeback on "Buried Alive" to bowing out with a goth-prom ballad just about as good as "Maps" with "Wedding Song".
While their counterparts of NYC rock’s early-oughts era like The Strokes and The National seem to be spinning their wheels creatively going into their veteran days, its great to see the YYYs still keeping it fresh with each new effort.
