Artist: Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Album: Mosquito

The first time I heard the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the experience was transformative. Karen O’s voice was the psychotic sneer of a spoiled child, and her accomplice Nick Zinner always matched her caterwauling to just the right instrumental bobs and weaves. Their breakthrough album, “Fever to Tell,” was a game changer in American music, and 2009’s “It’s Blitz” had everyone heaving a sigh of relief that the Yeah Yeah Yeahs still had it. That was then. This is now, kids. It is with a heavy heart that I report that “Mosquito,” like its namesake …kind of sucks.

There is a unique sadness that descends when the first track on a beloved band’s new album is the high point. There’s a glimmer of hope, and the rest of the album becomes a slow, confusing journey. Such is the case with “Sacrilege” – and even that track doesn’t quite deliver the whole package. The unadorned production was integral to the brash bravado of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs early work. So when a gospel choir makes their appearance partway through “Sacrilege,” it is an unwelcome and frankly perplexing left turn. “Buried Alive” stumbles in the same way with an odd rap interlude.

In the intervening years since “It’s Blitz,” Karen O has bleached her signature black bob and tied the knot – two concessions to the status quo that may be indicative of the abundance of the same on “Mosquito.”