Album Review – The Strokes

Review — By Andrew Evans on 17/03/11

‘For better or for worse The Strokes continue to refuse to consolidate, and for that they must be congratulated.  Angels pushes their boundaries and will challenge peoples expectations and preconceptions. And that’s worth something.’

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You kind of feel for The Strokes.  When they arrived, seemingly fully formed in 2001 on a tidal wave of sleezy rock n roll songs, journalists and music fans alike were screaming for something new, or rather, something that wasn’t ‘nu’. The Strokes were certainly different – they didn’t compliment their crunching guitars with a DJ for starters, and goodness me weren’t those jeans a trifle tighter that those of there classmates.

In frontman Julian Casablancas they had everything – a charismatic, brooding, heart-stealing poster boy who crooned his way through some of the scuzziest melodies we’d heard in a while and upon the release of their game changing debut Is This It,  it was unanimous: The Strokes – completed by guitarists Nick Valensi and Albert Hammond Jnr, bassist Nikolai Fraiture and drummer Fabrizio Moretti – were special.

While its follow up, 2004′s Room On Fire was impressive enough, upon the release of their third effort, First Impressions of Earth in 2006, which certainty lacked a certain sparkle, many were calling the quintet a spent creative force. Despite being the decades most important group, they were arguably the biggest victims of an ever-growing fickleness that would become a worrying trait of the music lovers of 2000 and beyond. Over the course of just 36 songs they went from hero to, while not zero, it was becoming clear that loyalty was thin on the ground in the iPod age.

It came as no surprise then that in May 2007 The Strokes announced that they would be taking a break for the rest of the year. Little did we – and you suspect, most likely, they – know that it would be four years before we heard from them again. All members of the group bar Valensi poured themselves into other projects, most notably Casablancas and Hammond’s respective solo work.

Giving the tensions within the group time to subside, as well as allowing members to explore new musical ground, some thought the extended break would be a canny decision. Perhaps we would remember how much we need them once they’ve been gone a while. And now, 10 years after that debut and against a backdrop of chart-hugging RnB and the emergence of dubstep into the mainstream, it is perhaps no coincidence that The Vaccines, a band being heralded very much as the return of rock n roll sound uncannily like, well, The Strokes.

However, anyone expecting The Strokes to bound back into our lives without a fuss were to be disappointed.  In interviews Casablancas has revealed resentment within the group, while Valensi has echoed this sentiment, talking of hostility and a possible reason behind the regroup:  ”Maybe everyone needed money or something. ‘We gotta pay our mortgage so may as well get this going again.’”  Quite.

It is surprising then, taking into account the harsh recording conditions, that Angels opens on such a joyful trio of tunes. Teasingly, after five long years, the first words we hear from Casablancas are apt, ‘putting your patience to the test’ he swoons on the new wave reggae of opener Machu Picchu. Bass is set to bubbly and the guitars work off one another beautifully. So far, so Strokes.  Like Is This It and What Ever Happened? before it, it’s an understated opener, only in the sense that it doesn’t come roaring out of the blocks in terms of tempo.

No, no. That is left to first single Under Cover of Darkness – a golden nugget of a song that, not content with just the one, has two chant-along choruses – in which Casablancas tells us that ‘everybody’s singing the same song for 10 years”; cheeky for a number that sounds like a long-lost relative of Last Night. You’ve no doubt heard it by now so we’ll quickly move on, but to deny its place in the pantheon of great Strokes singles only because of its brief time with us would be unfair – it’s classic, classic stuff.

The 80′s influenced, stadium indie of Two Kinds of Happiness sees Casablancas putting in a heroic vocal effort both in terms of range and melody lines, while in its epic chorus drums clatter and guitars break into glorious technicolour.  It’s the type of song you never want to stop and, as it swells towards its last hurrah, you get the sense its creators thought the same.

Elsewhere, there are more rays of sunshine. The Valensi-penned Taken For A Fool is one of the few songs that fits into the mould of ‘old Strokes’.  Gratisfaction conjures up a montage of the 5 of them prancing around New York in what can only be described as good ol’ shenanigans, such is its chorus’s effectiveness at hitting the button marked Good Times.

It’s not all plain sailing though. You’re So Right is a claustrophobic stab at post-punk that doesn’t quite work, while the diet-electro of Games gets a little lost in the crossfire.

The Strokes will never make another Is This It, and they don’t really need to, it’s importance is held forever in the history of a genre that it helped revive. Angels marks the start of new phase for the group, one that is informed by their experiences away from the band as much as the ones within it. They could have easily steadied things by writing 10 songs that sound like the vintage of what has come before it, but they didn’t. For better or for worse The Strokes continue to refuse to consolidate, and for that they must be congratulated.

Angels pushes their boundaries and will challenge peoples expectations and preconceptions. And that’s worth something.