The Band That Invented Millennials

We Millennials can feel it in our hips: our coolness curdling. Jokes about our fashions and facial expressions have proliferated, and they don’t just mock the idea of circa-40-year-olds hissing yas while squeezing into skinny jeans. They paint a caricature of a generation as business-casual incarnate, careerists in a failing corporation, who have been deluded into thinking that individuality consists of peppiness, baby-speak, and indie. Squad, how’d we get this way?

, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ first album in nine years, sheds some light on that question. Life-affirming and eclectic dance-rock with apocalyptic themes, the music is lovely, and a reminder of how long the 21st century has been. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, a trio of Gen Xers, accidentally helped create one of the dominant