All jokes about “Mosquito” and wasting to the comment section, please…
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[6.43]
Will Adams: I saw Yeah Yeah Yeahs live for the first time last weekend, and what I saw was a true star. Karen O had the audience rapt from beginning to end. It wasn’t her sparkling lavender suit or the crosses painted under her eyes. It was her performance, which always teetered on the brink of madness. She spun the microphone cord like a whip and made wild faces while hitting the notes perfectly. She was controlled, moving methodically across stage, though she looked a twitch away from an outburst. I could not keep my eyes off her. “Despair” captures that essence, staying understated for its nearly five minute run while Karen vaults up and down octaves. Midway through, the music picks up, and Karen pulls into those tight high notes, leaving me anticipating an explosion. Whether it happens or not, I’m hooked until the last second, waiting to find out.
[7]
Alfred Soto: Before discovering they excelled at synth pop, Triple Y did pretty well with lullabies, especially if they could break the vessel with distortion and programmed gewgaws. “Despair” is a better song and performance than “Maps,” we’ll keep this secret between us.
[7]
Patrick St. Michel: Bad high-school poetry that leads into chants that might as well be filler. The one thing that could lift this one up would be “Despair” building up to a great ending, but this just gets louder and then goes away.
[3]
Anthony Easton: This sounds all Morricone, until it hits that kick drum and all sorts of weirdness pops up. Karen O starts slow and breathy, and at the same time as that drums, speeds up, until the Morricone drops into some New Wave borrowings — that transition might be one of the best things I have heard this year.
[9]
Edward Okulicz: “Despair” is saved from being an insubstantial, underwritten song with some slightly teen-poetry lyrics by the finely-tuned vocal performance of Karen O. It’s not so much that it’s forceful or charismatic or electrifying — it’s that she sells the vulnerability and the need while sounding like she’s taking a drunken swing at them in self-defence. It’s weird that it builds to a climax that ends up being nonvocal, but it’s fine, and the outro sort of reminds of Radiohead’s “Airbag.” It’s a fine reminder that the basics of rock instrumentation can be symphonies by themselves.
[8]
Brad Shoup: The drum machine flaps like the mosquito on the cover, whipping the get-it-together tale into a frenzy of fistpumps. It’s all terribly linear, and O sings “no more tears” like she’s got ad agency connections.
[4]
Katherine St Asaph: Mosquito isn’t a coherent album so much as a collection of ways Yeah Yeah Yeahs could be. “Despair” is one of the better incarnations: the one where Karen O is Mary Weiss with an axe and the clout to film on the Empire State. Kinda funny to think how many bands spent how much buzz to pull this off this decade, then the YYYs come in putzing around and basically do.
[7]