Tag Archives: Strokes

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The Strokes – Room on Fire

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The Strokes – Room on Fire (RCA)

Seriously, what was everyone expecting from The Strokes?

From all of the backlash and disinterest about the group’s second album, Room on Fire, it seems as if people had high expectations. Did you want an exploration into drum’n’bass? How about some grandiose symphonic statement?

The fact is, on Is This It, Julian and Co. painted themselves into a bit of a corner. It’s tough to evolve a formula like that and come away successful. What The Strokes did was ignore over-thinking their sophomore release and focus on fleshing out the sonic characteristics of their first. Which we should feel lucky for, by the way, because Room on Fire is the most pleasantly surprising album of the year.

The biggest change to be found on Room on Fire is how much guitarists Albert Hammond and Nick Valensi have grown. They’ve honed their skills and are trying on a few new sounds—take for example tracks like “12:51” and “The End Has No End,” where the lead guitar actually sounds like a synth fresh out of the eighties. While the guitars still follow a direct line from Is This It, they’re tinkered with enough and feature more depth now. The bad news is that Valensi and Hammond are the only ones that have seemingly sought out to improve their playing. Julian Casablancas hasn’t bothered to broaden his range; the vocals, lyrics, and songwriting haven’t gotten noticeably better. Luckily, the songwriting was already strong to begin with and Casablancas’ vocals, while not a great example of how to sing, compliment the music well.

Highlights include “Meet Me in the Bathroom,” “Automatic Stop” and “Between Love and Hate,” but the best song on Room on Fire, and actually the best song The Strokes have ever written is “Under Control,” which finds the boys trying on their 50s hat and sees Julian crooning: “You are young, darling / for now but not for long.” It’s a gorgeous song, rivaling “Someday” in the pure strength that it carries.

So it seems, if we’re speaking retrospectively, that The Strokes are emerging from the 1970s garage-punk revival that made them so popular to begin with and are starting to carry a shade of the 80s as well. It may not change the world, and it may not be as good as Is This It. There is bound to be a split in opinion over Room on Fire between those who were expecting The Greatest Album of All Time and those who were expecting The Strokes to be a flash in the pan. Well, they’ve emerged in the middle. But The Strokes have never been ones to care about such things, that’s shown in the music. Love ’em or hate ’em, you’ve got to respect that kind of nonchalance. Maybe all the hype over The Strokes was overdone after all, but with songs like this, who cares?

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AFTER THE GOLDRUSH

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The Strokes gear up for phase two

The smoke has cleared.

After the turbulent months of smothering hype and gushing publicity, The Strokes have emerged largely unscathed. In New York and elsewhere, hipsters in hexagonal eyewear have moved on to discussing Rival Schools as the next rock and roll heroes, and the UK press is now swooning and fixing their hair about Starsailor. Sure, there’s still hype. How could there not be? But it is not of the viscous, butter cream variety that surrounded the band during their meteoric rise to darling, or hated, status, depending on who you hang with or which message boards you visit. The paradox is that, after all of the windbag platitudes, The Strokes are still – as they always have been – just a band.

What do they do now?

Past and future hype aside, The Strokes’ career as rock stars is unfolding in a manner befitting a talented young group with the attention and financial backing of a large record label. They are touring diligently behind their record, and getting solid spins at modern rock stations in many large radio markets. They even filmed a video for “Last Nite,” albeit on their own terms. Refusing to fake playing their instruments, The Strokes opted for a live performance on a well-lit soundstage. The resulting clip has garnered a solid following on MTV’s “Total Request Live,” and just may bestow Cliff Richard status upon Julian Casablancas, outside the dueling realms of indie chicks and silicon golddiggers already waiting with empty dance cards by the door of his tourbus. Which is fine. Before it spun wildly out of control, the band’s publicity onslaught was the same as any other group that had the ear of its backer. In an alternate world, The Strokes would have emerged as a promising buzz band, a la the current hubbub surrounding Arizona emo-poppers Jimmy Eat World. After 6 years of success in the Indie world, Jimmy Eat World signed to Dreamworks, and are currently winning over a nation of Blink-182 fans with their infectious brand of New Wave-y power chordage. But for reasons that have been documented too many times to be named here (You don’t know? You better ask somebody), The Strokes followed a different path to their current state. Their buzz exploded before note one, and only after this Hungry Man-sized portion of bullshit did they begin the systematic rocking of hearts and minds that most baby bands use to actually establish said buzz. They may have had us at hello, but now it’s “What have you done for me lately?”

The challenge here is to remove the machine from the band, and view them as any other gang of rockers with something to prove. For even without the hype (there’s that word again), the band’s music is worth hearing, and if it hadn’t been put under such a glaring light, would likely move mad units anyway. Viewing The Strokes as Just Another Band then, their next move would be another single, performances at a few of those radio station holiday bashes, and appearances on major media outlets to solidify their name in the brains of the Sugar Ray’d. In fact, they have already taken that step. The Strokes will appear on “Saturday Night Live” January 19th, with host Jack Black. Playing out this business plan of sorts, The Strokes would parlay their SNL appearance into a series of early Spring shows, perhaps piggybacking a tour with an appropriately cool, already popular tastemaker like Weezer or even Incubus. The Strokes would then appear on whatever mildly sexual college entertainment MTV has planned for Spring Break, with Casablancas acting as a judge for, say, a beachfront edition of the network’s popular “Say What Karaoke.” By Summer, Casablancas and his mates would be ready for a large-form arena tour. The second year of Moby’s successfully eclectic Area:One tour of last Summer would seem to be a good fit. And after all of this, The Strokes, critical darlings who were once both hated and loved by music types everywhere, would officially be Rock Stars. And their sophomore album would feature too many keyboards and be destroyed by the very same critics who wrote XOXO in their diaries a year before.

This is all speculation. If The Strokes’ ascendance occurs as such, a legion of music intellectuals will undoubtedly dismiss them more than they already have, accusing the band with the same vitriol meted out to Green Day in 1993. You will recall that Billie Joe Armstrong and the boys were lambasted for “selling out their punk roots” after signing with a major and releasing Dookie to instant success. The difference here is that The Strokes have never been very punk rock, and don’t have much of an Indie pedigree to sell out upon. Nevertheless, because so much of their aura has focused upon their NYC rock pedigree (Television, Velvet Underground, etc.), if The Strokes become rockin’ 9-to-5’ers and not just a fashionable flash in the underground pan, people who gnash their teeth over this sort of thing will disown them. Because implicit in the shitstorm surrounding the group was the joy at being part of it. And when it’s over, it’s time to move on to the next band that has something to offer beyond pent up rage, a dreamboat singer, or a hot series of hooks.

The Strokes have, for all practical purposes, outlasted their own hype. In countless interviews, the band has repeated their wish that everyone talkin’ at them would just listen to the music. Well, now everyone is. And as just another band in showbiz, The Strokes need to decide if they want to burn out, fade away, or continue to do their part in making pop music rock again.

JTL

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The Strokes: Fell in Love with You before the Second Show

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The Strokes Blow Up The Spot (And That’s No Hype!)

On Friday night at Metro, the Strokes ran every route in the rookie rock star playbook. They played the waiting game with their sold out crowd, booked an impossibly shitty band as an opener, performed behind a shroud of smoke, and even fell off the stage, just like alleged burgeoning rock icons should. Thusly, you could call them prima donnas. You could even be like the dude in front of me, and scream out “You make me hate rock and roll!”

Or you could have shut the fuck up about the hype, the hair, and the RCA cheese, and reveled in the series of real rock moments that the NYC quintet tossed off with casual efficiency and genuine dedication – just like real rock icons should.

The Strokes don’t just wear their influences on their sleeves – they went to St Vincent DePaul and scrounged up the whole damn suit. And so what? When they finally emerged from backstage about 2am, and Julian Casablancas keeled over his mic stand, promptly misjudging the lip of the stage during the set opener, all of their Velvet Underground tendencies and New York accoutrements mattered little. The band that has J.Lo’s PR types scratching their skulls detonated their own hype and kicked the debris into the balcony, right in the faces of all the pretty people politely cheering with their pinkies raised. An obviously inebriated Casablancas could give a shit about celebrity guests or the slicked-back gold card humps that clogged the cramped environs of Metro. Performing their bare-bones catalog in 45 sweaty, tightly-wound moments, Casablancas, dueling guitarists Nick Valensi and Albert Hammond, Jr, drummer Fab Moretti and bassist Nikolai Fraiture pretty much made each of their 12 songs sound like a true anthem. Casablancas’ vocal – a sandpaper-y cross between Lou Reed and Morrissey – weaved in between the two guitars’ soloing and the rhythm section’s admirable groove, even as his motor skills failed him to the point that he must have leaned on each of his comrades at least twice during the set.

Towards the end of the set, Our Fair Singer pushed the dirty, sullen mop out of his eyes. Introducing “New York City Cops,” a track removed from the forthcoming Is This It? LP in the wake of September 11 (subsequently pushing the release of the record back to October 9), Casablancas was sincere through his drunkenness. “People have been writing some shit about this next song,” he slurred. “Yeah, well, we were fucking there, man, we were fucking there, okay? [And all we’re trying to do] is be confident!” With that, The Strokes launched into “New York City Cops,” a song that would only be misconstrued as offensive by those who tend to make decisions without even hearing the music. The number burned like white phosphorus, and followed up by “Take It Or Leave It,” The Strokes left the stage with a one-two punch of hard-edged, REAL rock and roll that showed their true colors as passionate musicians and — perhaps — future rock icons.

Too much has been written about the Strokes’ stylish pedigree, both by this website and other outlets (Hello, Rolling Stone.) But if Friday night’s show proved anything, it’s that the band can talk the talk. The group’s reverence for its NYC rock forbearers is obvious, both in print and in person. But what about Albert Hammond, Jr’s stage moves on lead guitar, those that recalled Joe Perry, or even Slash? Those guys aren’t New Yorkers. What about the obvious New Wave influences in the precision of the songs and Valensi’s high strung, frenetic rhythm guitar? I swear I heard the Housemartins floating around in there. And the whole band’s underlying groove of booze, love, and anger remind me as much of Mission of Burma’s “That’s When I Reach For My Revolver” as they do of Television or The Ramones. There’s the rub: For months, we’ve been hearing all about the Strokes, without really hearing – really listening to – the music itself. Though the group’s fantastic plastic hype machine will undoubtedly help it sell records, it’s fire-in-the-belly performances like what took place on Friday night that will really make them rock stars. After all, something’s going down in music these days. Pop is dead, Nu Metal is over, and Hip Hop’s wack clown princes are marginalizing the form’s true artists. Rock and Roll never died, but a group like the Strokes – with their energy, simple enthusiasm, and of course their drunken antics – can certainly help the Rock get back on track, and reap the benefits of what it has sown.

JTL

Note: Sting will be glad to hear that I officially hate Moldy Peaches more than he and his soulless corporate whore yuppie rock. Moldy Peaches are a duo from New York City who I had the nauseous fortune to stand through while waiting for The Strokes to take the stage Friday. Remember that geeky neighbor kid that always tried to hang out with you and your friends growing up? The one that copped all your bits, tried to hang but couldn’t, and had food stuck in his braces? Well, New York City’s Moldy Peaches are that kid, if he listened through the wall while Beat Happening, The Vaselines, Frank Zappa, and The Flaming Lips practiced. A bastardized, shitty version of these venerable artists, The Moldy Peaches are the worst thing I’ve paid money for since dollar dances at the Ypsilanti Déjà Vu. Kimya Dawson and Adam Green, two dopes riding a very different New York pedigree than that of the Strokes, came off like The Frogs or Ween if those groups put their wicked senses of humor in a cryogenic chamber and received a year of free lobotomies. Unfunny, unoriginal, and utterly horrible, The Moldy Peaches are the worst thing to happen to music since Fred Durst had kids. You’ve been warned.

JTL

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The Strokes: I Heard They Suck Live

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They’re cooler than Keith Richards. Their music will save your life. And their haircuts will make your girlfriend leave you. They are The Strokes, and they’re coming to a truck-stop shower stall near you.

If you ask the nice folks in Lake Edna what they think of Fabrizio Moretti’s drumming skills, or Albert Hammond, Jr’s coif of impossibly unwashed hair, they might use responses similar to those uttered by the good people listening to “Short Skirt, Long Jacket” in John McRea’s docu-video for Cake’s new single. In the clip, no one cares that McRea’s band is “hep” and features a trumpet. His snide, proto-Malkmus lyricisms get about as far as the left bra strap before the hearty souls listening on headphones hold up a pink hand and say “WOAH! Outta the car, longhair!” Cake’s inability to get to third base with the average American who doesn’t wear odd eyewear or sport a homemade Kahimi Karie T-shirt illustrates the humor behind The Strokes’ campaign of guerilla chic. Even though every critic from London to Los Angeles has taken their moniker literally, Dot down at the LeSabre Diner probably wouldn’t seat Moretti, Hammond, Nikolai Fraiture, Nick Valensi, or Julian Casablancas if they stumbled through her door looking for a round of blintzes. “They looked homeless,” she would remark later.

The Strokes are an NYC product, built out of showcases at the Bowery Ballroom and Mercury Lounge. They wear leather. They’re pretty. And none of them can rent a car legally. Is that why this quintet of fabulously wasted youths have made like Jimi Hendrix, storming the UK press before anyone in the US even bums them a Marlboro? No. It’s because the Strokes’ full-length RCA debut (slated for September) will move more units if a few pricey Rough Trade singles have already spread the word amongst the funny shoes set. For you everydayers, those are the freakishly pale youngsters on the subway who look like they stepped out of the couture section in your copy of British GQ. For this truly is the demographic that this sort of marketing works on. Just like Jessica Simpson and City High touring your local supermall (“SEE the STARS! BUY their RECORD!”), a band of the Strokes’ pedigree sells records anyway it can. And if a million media outlets (including NME, Top of the Pops, The Face, Blender, and Sonic Net) buy into their New York state of mind and unwashed groove, then that’s more blowjobs for Julian Casablancas and his mates. And I don’t mean from the critics.

So what’s up? Are they a Flock of Seagulls tribute act, or what? Nah, but those guys had nice haircuts, too. No, the Strokes’ ju ju, based on two EPs and a brief domestic stint with Guided by Voices, seems to revolve around the musical heart of — surprise – New York City. After all, they are children of Manhattan, and Julian’s daddy is John Casablancas, brains behind Elite Modeling. In the chiming, gritty guitars of “The Modern Age” EP lie echoes of The Velvets, and Julian’s faux crooning goes a long way toward conjuring Lou Reed. Their simplistic, yet tuneful songs could suggest the No-Wave of Television. Or they could just be amateurs. Either way, their hair is perfect…

The boys grace the latest Rolling Stone’s “Random Notes” column with a photo that seems boilerplate Strokes: As half-drank Budweisers add color, the lads stare into and away from the camera’s flash, reveling in their complete wasteosity. Bassist Fraiture seems to be pointing at Hammond’s crotch. “No, you put that in the model’s growler.” As this shot is basically identical to every other Strokes publicity snap, one can only assume that, even if their music doesn’t make any waves with Joe Heartland, at least the elegant boys from New York’ll deflower his daughter.

And if that isn’t as cool as Keith Richards, what is?

JTL