Album reviews: Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Cool It Down, and Plastic Mermaids – It’s Not Comfortable to Grow

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ new album lacks their original urgency, while Plastic Mermaids prove they’re evolving with ‘It’s Not Comfortable To Grow’

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs (David Black)

Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Cool It Down

★★★☆☆

This is the way the Yeah Yeah Yeahs return, not with a “Bang” – as the lascivious punk lead track from their debut EP was named in 2001 – but with a sizzle. The electronic textures that have been underpinning Nick Zinner’s gruesome guitar slashes since 2009’s It’s Blitz!, and which kept the lo-fi retro-trash tunes of 2013’s last album Mosquito up to date, have, on this long-awaited fifth album, almost completely consumed the band. They’ve largely ditched guitars for the sort of dramatic, cavernous electronics favoured by Perfume Genius, who guests on the climate reckoning first single and album opener “Spitting Off the Edge of the World”. The eight tracks of Cool It Down (a real mission statement of a title) make for a quasi-gothic synth record that beefs up the Eighties revivalism of the past decade... even as it leaves behind the yelping dynamism of their youth for a more considered and placid middle-age.

At times, when synths start to twinkle like The Cure or singer Karen O declares “I’m hungry like the wolf” over the very Eighties synthpop of “Wolf”, Cool It Down could be mistaken for a knowing satire of the prevailing retro-tronic tides. Not so: the spoken-word evocations of romantic yearning and the wonders of motherhood on mood pieces “Lovebomb” and “Mars” are tenderly earnest, and there’s an authentic affection to the Eighties breakdance homage “Fleez”, right down to a lyrical nod to Bronx funk legends ESG. They’re fully committed to the album’s stretches of melodic ambience, even if they’re rarely bedrock for tunes as tight as classic YYYs ballads such as “Little Shadow”, “Skeletons” or “Maps”. The chill in the air seems to subdue Karen’s vocals, too. Despite disco, house and pop beats breaking out around her, it’s only with the psych-pop “Different Today” and the messed-up Motown of “Burning”, where the chorus bristles with orchestral urgency and Zinner breaks the glass on his most radioactive guitar, that the album’s pulse rises much above the average Downton Abbey episode.

There’s still a delight inherent in being in the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ company, but unemotional electronics aren’t the best conductor of the core power and commotion of one of the planet’s most exhilarating live bands. Indeed, if it wasn’t so long coming, you might call Cool It Down a stop-gap. MB

Plastic Mermaids – It’s Not Comfortable to Grow

(Siobhan Devlin and Douglas Richards)

★★★★★

In June, a review of Plastic Mermaids’ Glastonbury performance observed the Isle of Wight band’s “carnivalesque” melding of influences, from folk to pop, jazz to psychedelia. It’s an approach that has drawn understandable comparisons to The Flaming Lips, with debut album Suddenly Everyone Explodes emulating the US act’s eccentric soundscapes.

On their magnificent follow-up It’s Not Comfortable to Grow, frontman Douglas Richards takes on the role of psych-pop space explorer, drifting through galaxies of celestial choirs, sunbursts of brass, and synths – masterminded by his brother, Jamie – that blink and whirl like shooting stars. There’s an ambitious cinematic quality to it all. The title track is superb: at its climax is a euphoric, pulsating synth line, rocketing skywards only to plummet without warning, landing amid sparse piano notes and Richards’ vocodered whispers.

“Girl Boy Girl”, flouncing in on a buzzy electric keys hook, has a touch of the baroque about it. “Something Better” is a carousel waltz tempered by Richards’s morose monologuing. Then there’s “Epsom Salts”, with its spaghetti western guitar strums, plodding keys, and lyrics that allude to lingering memories and knowing (or not knowing) when to let go. “I can’t let you in,” Richards sings on “It’s Pretty Bad”, almost drowned out by a cacophony of brass. “I can’t let you out.” He lets loose on the sultry, swaggering “Disco Wings”, declaring “it’s my life and I don’t care if I get it right or wrong”. And however far one song might veer, there’s always something – a crunchy riff, a synth breakdown – that maintains the record’s sense of cohesion. It’s compositional brilliance and, contradicting the title, proof this band are evolving in spectacular fashion. ROC