On The Strokes, who paved the way for revivalist garage rock in the new millennium with their sterling 2001 debut Is This It, in the process becoming one of the biggest indie rock bands of the last decade.
New York City, the year 2000. The Twin Towers tower over the bustling city, far above the underground nightlife that swings to repetitive, unoriginal 80s dance, or mean ghettos populated with diamond-studded rappers, or the midtown Manhattan airwaves brimming with plastic boy band pop. Rock music is out of the picture, has been so since Sonic Youth, or perhaps even The Velvet Underground. The city is beckoning, beseeching someone new to take over. Five kids sporting the choicest of leather jackets swagger their way in. Right place, right time, with just the right music.
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| These brats knew they owned the goddamned scene all along. Heck, do they look like they care? |
The explosion of The Strokes, first onto NYC's music scene and then the world rejuvenated the then directionless indie rock scene. Their sterling debut album,
Is This It, WAS it. The media proclaimed them as the 'saviors of rock & roll.' The hype grew, so did the band's fan base, and with this some began to dismiss them as 'just another band' that would die amid the hype and fade into nothingness.
Messiahs or not, they were a bloody solid band. Self-assured without succumbing to arrogance. The 11 tracks on
Is This It, packaged under a tight 36 minutes, are produced with unbelievable crispness and finesse. The songs explore the pleasures, frustrations and oddities of the rambunctious 'big city life' in the Big Apple. Frontman Julian Casablancas sings with calm aggression in a cool, detached way that has cocky written all over it. The album's chief appeal however, comes from the background wall of chugging guitars and mechanical drums. The Strokes layer basic riffs, beats and melodies to produce an efficient, minimalist and deceivingly simple sound. A sound which revived old-school garage rock (
à la The Stooges, The Velvet Underground) and paved the way for a new wave which still continues to sweep the music world (
à la Interpol, Kings of Leon, Arctic Monkeys).
Here's
Is This It. Prepare to be charmed.
Essential tracks: Hard To Explain, Soma, Last Nite & Take It Or Leave It.
Bands who release excellent first albums find it difficult to match expectations with their second outing. The Strokes decided to retain their signature sound for their second album
Room on Fire, essentially conceiving a twin brother for
Is This It. 11 tracks, 33 minutes, chugging rhythms, same old same old. They played safe, the album was successful, but the need to evolve was apparent, more so because the indie rock scene was booming and new bands were sprouting by the hour.
Their third album
First Impressions of Earth saw them incorporate synthesizers into their vision of retro-rock (like many other bands of the time,
The Killers for instance). The first five songs are everything a Strokes' fan could ever want from them; like the brilliant opener '
You Only Live Once' which blessed the YOLO trend
way before it became hip. The rest of the album is a mess, gone is the airtight coherence and self-assuredness the Strokes were so oozing with back in the
Is This It days.
The Strokes embraced YOLO before it became mainstream. If that isn't ubercool, what is?
Perhaps that's why the Strokes then took a long break, with Casablancas pursuing a solo project in the meantime. They returned with the inconsequential
Angles in 2011 and a more welcome
Comedown Machine in 2013. What was apparent was the Strokes' move to draw inspiration from their contemporaries (some of them in turn inspired by The Strokes) (snakes swallowing their own tails, anyone?). Their embracement of an ambient synth sound and Casablancas singing in falsetto (what in god's name, right?) was surprising too.
Comedown Machine turned out be somewhat of a consolation, had throwbacks to
Is This It and was lively and fresh in patches,
Tap Out and One Way Trigger being a few.
On a personal note, The Strokes' music was the reason I started listening to more 00's indie rock (over 70s rock, which I was super into before I fell in love with
Is This It). They sound so fresh, so alive (just like the big city life they sing about) that I find myself going back to listening their songs now and then just to reassure myself that good music still exists. And you're more likely to drown in the exuberance of their chiming guitars than in the Pacific Ocean. Drown away, my friends!
When The Strokes started out, Casablancas wanted them to sound like a band from the past that took a time trip into the future to make their record. About fifteen years in, they seem to have departed from that vision in the quest to evolve and stand out. Unlike bands that peak early and diminish into insignificance, the Strokes seem to have prolonged a hit to a brick wall. Perhaps, for them, the only way ahead into the future is to look back into the past.
