Once you get past its brevity, Cool It Down has some amazing dance tracks that almost make the nine-year wait worth it.
When the Yeah Yeah Yeahs first announced their fifth album Cool It Down was, the elation that they were releasing a new album for the first time in nine long years soon gave way to a question of what this album could possibly sound like. While few would debate that the Yeah Yeah Yeahs were one of the most seminal indie rock acts of the 2000s, pinning their style down is a little trickier. Their heavy and raw debut Fever to Tell gave way to the more refined Show Your Bones, then the band went electronic for It’s Blitz!, and then Mosquito was an eclectic mix of everything. Even frontwoman Karen O’s solo albums couldn’t be more different: Crush Songs was nothing but simple acoustic tracks that rarely exceeded a couple minutes, while Lux Prima (recorded with Danger Mouse) went into orchestral pop and trip-hop. Early press leaks could have suggested Cool It Down be anything from thrash punk to baroque ballads, and fans would believe it. But most importantly, would this album be worth the nine year wait?
Since Cool It Down clocks in at just 32 minutes, your first impression of the album will probably be “that’s it?!” Once you get past its brevity, Cool It Down has some amazing dance tracks that almost make the nine year wait worth it.
Previously, the gold standard for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ dance songs was “Heads Will Roll” from It’s Blitz!, released all the way back in 2009. Cool It Down is full of new contenders for this title, and the album as a whole leans heavily into the synthpop they first experimented with on It’s Blitz. “Wolf” has a synthesizer melody that explodes during its chorus of “in heaven, lost my taste for hell,” and a bridge of Kraftwerk-like industrial snares. Nothing matches this track’s dynamic shifts, and it kicks off the album’s high-octane midsection. “Fleez” lets drummer Brian Chase and guitarist Nick Zinner show off their chops in creating a dance-rock track, while “Different Today” contrasts the grooviest and best bassline on the album with the most mind-numbingly simple and repetitive lyrics. Then there’s “Burning,” where Karen O gives her best vocal performance on the album over a chaotic mix of piano, distorted guitar riffs, and disco strings. All of these tracks are sure to get you moving, and make Cool It Down the danciest Yeah Yeah Yeahs album yet.
Other parts of Cool It Down are similar to Karen O’s 2019 collaboration with Danger Mouse, Lux Prima. “Lovebomb” has an ambling beat and pronounced bass notes, giving it a trip-hop quality, and the whole track is awash in psychedelic synthesizers. “Blacktop” has a short drum beat repeated throughout (surprisingly not a drum machine loop), and the rest of its instrumentation is noticeably scaled-back. These are fine songs in their own right, but feel more like Karen O solo releases than something that shows off the trio’s full breadth. The album closes with “Mars,” a short track of Karen O reading a poem about sharing a moment with her son over a lullaby-like melody. It’s cute and all, but functions solely as a touching finale rather than an actual song.
The uniqueness of each Yeah Yeah Yeahs album makes it hard to say if Cool It Down is “better” or “worse” than what they’ve put out before, although it could be boiled down to “the dance album.” The band were pioneers of the great wave of indie rock that launched from New York City in the 2000s right alongside the Strokes and Interpol (see the book Meet Me in the Bathroom), but Cool It Down isn’t all that innovative of an album, given how many indie bands dabble in synthpop now. I doubt the Yeah Yeah Yeahs are really concerned about this, though, and they admirably got back into the swing of making music because they just wanted to. With their legacy assured, Cool It Down is the band making something celebratory, and is undeniably fun. You’ll just wish you didn’t have to wait nearly a decade to hear it.
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