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S O U N D S | Taking Note
Why The Strokes
Granted, I’m late to the gate with a Strokes review. But I have a good reason: I’ve been waiting to see what happens to the so-called Velvet Underground meets Brit-pop wannabes in the aftermath of their first tragically cool release, Is This It. I was being smart, I thought, resisting the urge to rip them apart in the face of success. Staying aloof, giving myself literary distance, so that when I finally decided to put pen to paper, the result would be honest and individual, if not wholly authoritative. And so here I am. It’s a Saturday morning. I’m a tad hung over from a downtown Friday-night club romp and debating whether or not to go to the gym after having ingested for breakfast a piece of cold chicken and burnt shot of espresso — a common predicament among 25-year-olds. So why am I mentioning it? Well, I’m about the same the age as the members of the Strokes: guitarist Nick Valensi with his stoner eyes, cut-square jaw, and bed-head hair; vocalist Julian Casablancas with his lazy fish-out-of-water, somebody-get-me-a cup-of-joe gaze; guitarist Albert Hammond, Jr., and his curly Slash-from-Guns-N-Roses bob and limp cigarette; bassist Nikolai Fraiture, a young Martin Amis looklike, with his sharp bone structure and long Prada-model locks; and drummer Fab Moretti, an intelligent scenester, who sports nearly too much confidence. My morning activity of choice, however, is not to exercise but to “chill” (which, in my case, means write), as people my age tend to say. So I fire up the CD changer and turn on my ears, a blank Microsoft Word window open, ready to be doused in jealous rage. And that’s when I realize how much of a joke I am. The universally lauded album’s title song, Is This It, starts with an electronica descent of six seconds or so, indicating that what awaits me is on the low-down, laid back and new. Then silence before a basic early-”80s drum-groove solo, preempting an electric-guitar lament, fuzzy and poorly mic”ed, in alberti-bass accompaniment (the sort Mozart wrote), as Casablancas offers whiny two-note slurs: “Caaan’t you, seeeee I’m, tryyyyin” / I don’t even liiiiike it / IIIII’d just, liiiiiike to, get to your aparrrrrtment / Nowwww I’m, stayyyyin” / Dead just for a whiiiiile / IIII can’t, thinnnnk cuz / I’m just way too TTTired / ” Is this it?” Rinse. Repeat. Does it sound like Lou Reed like everyone says? Eh. Is it substantive? Maybe. Is it real? A possibility. Is it phony, self-reverential, manufactured cool? Calculated mid-20s urban angst? Oh, who cares?!? It’s Saturday morning. I miss my ex-girlfriend. I feel like crap on account of having beaten the Village streets last night in cool, uncomfortable shoes amid a 20-degree wind. And this shit rings true. Not that I never questioned my existence. That I’m the sort of mid-twentysomething who walks invincible, taking life for granted. This music is just simple, appropriate. Basic, street-smart. Down with the struggle. The Strokes sound like they know my plight even if they were born chomping on silver spoons, went to fancy-shmancy prep schools, and had the luxury of spending their post high-school years in downtown bars and TriBeCa’s factory-spaces trying to “find themselves.” Just because they don’t have to work for a living, because their debut album caused the biggest ruckus in the rock-record industry for some time, because they aren’t riffing off the erudite modern-classical composer Olivier Messiaen like Radiohead, is no reason to hate them. Who cares if their producers style their hair ragged, make their eyes up to seem stoned and dress them in the killer retro garb that drives wild the young seductresses of major-city cool-centers. These guys have it. They’re hit-makers. And I feel in tune with my life this morning.
The rest of the record amounts to a volatile m”lange, like the life of a twentysomething. Certain songs work wonderfully; certain ones fail; and certain ones come off mixed on account of trying too hard. I dig the “The Modern Age,” a deconstructionist rant about the volatility of relationships peppered with syncopated harmony jabs and violently Jurassic drum pounds. It’s driven by a monochromatic engine that sets the stage for short, questioning, half-spoken phrases from a mic with feedback on the rise; the sound feels gritty, underground. The bridge, driven by George Harrison-esque licks, agitates Casablancas’ low-pitch drawls so that his voice rises ever so slightly with skeptic inspiration. “Leaving just in time, stayed there for a while / Rolling in the ocean, trying to catch her eye / Work hard and say it’s easy, do it just to please me / Tomorrow will be different, so I’ll pretend I’m leaving.” The songs “Soma,” “Take It Or Leave It” and “Barely Legal” are ruined by pop culture, despite their deliciously crusty irony (example: “I didn’t take no shortcuts / I spent the money that I saved up / Oh Mama running out of luck / But like my sister just don’t give a fuck / I want to steal your innocence / To me my life it don’t make sense / Your strange manners, I love you so / Why won’t you wear your new trench coat?”). Their grooves are a little childish, like (cheeky?) imitations of the early Stones, and sound too much like a familiar skit on Saturday Night Live where Jimmy Fallon, Chris Kattan, Tracy Morgan and the ridiculous Horacio Sanz jump in place to the sounds of their Casio keyboard, singing ridiculous lyrics (which change depending on the date of the show and the upcoming holidays) with deadpan, caffeinated verve. “Someday” is exquisitely fun. You can dance (or, as a colleague of mine has said, pogo) to its four-phrase feel-good riffs without even knowing how. You can sit still and absorb the half-serious, half-self-mocking poetics: “Oh my ex says I’m lacking in depth / I will do my best / You say you want to stay by my side / Darling your head’s not right / You see alone we stand together we fall apart / Yea I think I’ll be all right / I’m working so I wont have to try so hard / Tables they turn sometimes, oh someday / I ain’t wasting no more time / Trying, trying.” Or, and this is the best compliment any rock song can get, you can drive to it — alone — without any interest in getting where you’re headed. “Alone, Together” and its zig-zaggy guitar ostinato is a little too Rubber Soul-meets-Mick Jagger for me. The Super Mario Brothers riffs of “When It Started” don’t really match its melancholic vocals. And “Trying Your Luck” is too base: a boring groove below cliche lyrics — “And storefronts rarely change / At least I’m on my own again / Instead of anywhere with you / Ah tell me it’s all the same / And I lost my page again / I know this is surreal / But I’ll try my luck with you / This life is on my side / I am your one / Believe me this is a chance.” A surefire anthem of the new millennium, however, is the hit single “Last Nite.” This terse aria is so honest, I don’t care how overplayed it is; my kids are going to listen to this song in their high-school parking lot, the way I fell in love with Brit-pop, early CBGB punk, Lou Reed and Zeppelin IV. Nothing can sound more simple than the underlying electric groove that leads into the song’s offbeat flares, the perfect rocky pavement for Casablancas’ growly melodic laments: “Last nite she said, oh baby I feel so down / When you turn me off, when I feel left out / So I, I turned round / Oh baby don’t care no more, I know this for sure / I’m walking out that door / Well I’ve been in town for about fifteen whole minutes now / And baby I feel so down / And I don’t know why / I’ve been walking for miles.” But the album’s sleeper has to be “Hard To Explain.” This innocuously minimalistic miniature gets at the heart of what the Strokes have going for them: poignancy. There’s something in the song’s main theme that simply inspires eardrums to twist: a misguided melodic leap that leaves Casablancas on the wrong note — a discordant note — for about half a second before he lowers himself down a step to find his place. In classical music, this technique is called an appoggiatura. Here, it’s just called cool. As if our generation is just throwing ourselves around looking for that one pleasing note on which to rest: messing up, apologizing and trying to steady our lives. “We shared some ideas / All obsessed with fate / Ways we’re all the same / I don’t see it that way” / I’m not like that.” Uh huh; sure you’re not, Julian. And I’m so jaded, I don’t feel your groove. Adam Baer is Sounds editor at PopPolitics. He is editing an essay anthology about twentysomething cancer survivors, and has written for numerous publications including the New York Times Book Review, Travel + Leisure and the Village Voice. Related Sites |
