“This is a feel good, food for the soul, chicken soup for the ears Yeah Yeah Yeahs record,” Karen O said when their new Mosquito LP was announced in January. By the time a 24-piece gospel choir arrives 2 minutes into today’s taste, “Sacrilege,” we find out she wasn’t kidding on the “soul” front, not to mention her bit about the LP being “kind of raw, kind of chaotic, kind of dreamy.” The tune opens in spare territory with O’s hushed vocals punctured by hits of distorted yelps over a rare YYYs bass line, but soon enough drummer Brian Chase cuts into a funky groove, building toward the aforementioned choir-backed climax. If you hold their past records sacred, there are familiar elements from much of those at play here (as well as other work by co-producers Nick Launay and Dave Sitek), but this transcendent, uplifting coda feels brand new. Promising stuff indeed — hear it above. Mosquito arrives on April 16th.
