When the Yeah Yeah Yeahs exploded like a grenade in a vintage New York clothes store at the turn of the century, raining art-pop shrapnel and a hail of just-concealed expletives beneath banshee Karen O’s visceral, elated shriek onto daytime radio, you wouldn’t have given a second thought to what they’d be doing 8 years down the line. They were a band in and of a moment, impulsive, fearlessly creative, carefree, a little hysterical. That Yeah Yeah Yeahs was not compatible with a career. Yet here we find ourselves in 2009, Ms O looking more like a cast member of Sex & The City than rebellious, flailing fashion-statement, sounding more like Chrissie Hynde by the year and leading a band plotting their way through clean 80s pop templates. If anyone was wondering how they would or could ever mature and exist as a band that wasn’t a feisty 20 year old anymore, here’s your answer. And it’s not a bad one. This is a very different record to debut ‘Fever To Tell’ and even its more polished follow-up ‘Show Your Bones’, paying little heed to the visceral catharsis and scattergun creativity that first defined them. But still, drum power-house Brian Chase is there behind every beat and his many limbs are instantly recognisable on the propulsive ‘Dull Life’ and repetitive grind of ‘Shame & Fortune’, though clinical discipline is very much order of the year elsewhere. Nick Zinner, or at least the Nick Zinner we knew, has perhaps been most subdued by ‘It’s Blitz’ (Karen O is less manic, yes, but generally still runs unimpeded and free); his imaginative fretboard twists and blitzes have been somewhat bleached out of view, replaced by minimal synthesised melody lines, though his compositional skills are plan to see (take ‘Runaway’, awash with strings and twinkles, a la bat For Lashes, but very much still within the YYY’s realm). On one hand this all feels a little too knowingly now – ‘Dragon Queen’ for one is all a bit Lady Gaga – but as ever their output is of a different stature than contemporaries and copycats. It also comes headed up by ‘Zero’, a truly phenomenal Blondie/Goldfrapp/‘Time Warp’ three way, adding to the pantheon of alternative pop moments, and yet another with their name on.