Yeah Yeah Yeahs w/ Grand Ole Party

The new, synth-satured album It’s Blitz marks the end of an era for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. The New York band had long been phasing out the coarse rock 'n' roll they introduced themselves with at the height of the early-2000s garage-rock revival, and It's Blitz purges its few remaining vestiges. It's been a flattering transition. Though Karen O shined bright in her initial role as the wild, hypersexual frontwoman, she abandoned her cartoonish, beer-spitting, crotch-grabbing act before it could stale, recasting herself as a bighearted, sympathetic softie on 2006's Show Your Bones, a break-up album in spirit if not on paper. After years of channeling Chrissie Hynde's voice, she began channeling Hynde's sophistication as well.