30th July - The Strokes' Is This It

Artist – Album: The Strokes – Is This It

Released:  30^th July 2001

Sounds Like: This is it

Is This It was the first game changing record of the 21^st century. It sold bucketloads worldwide, contained three awesome singles and topped most end-of-year - and even end-of-decade - lists. It made it cool again to let your hair grow scruffy and long, to squeeze into a pair of the skinniest, crotch framing jeans possible and to strum away at your electric guitar. It paved the way for the success of The Libertines, Kings of Leon and Franz Ferdinand (admittedly by pilfering quite liberally from the likes of The Velvet Underground, Television and Tom Petty), and single-handedly made alternative rock cool again. Which is not too shabby for a debut.

Some of its success can be put down to the fact that it was brought to us by five good looking, hip New Yoikers, and it certainly helped to have such a celebrated list of influences, but ultimately it did well because it so good in itself. With a selection of songs as good as this it simply couldn’t fail. ‘Last Nite’ is the perfect encapsulation their sound: driving beats, explorative bass, whining guitars and Julian Casablancas’ laidback, cool delivery. Singling out one track over the others doesn’t really do it justice though, as they’re all special: ‘Is This It’, ‘The Modern Age’, ‘Soma’, ‘Someday’, ‘Hard to Explain’ and ‘Take It or Leave It’, they're all great.

Following the abominable terrorist attack by Al Qaeda on the Twin Towers the September after this album’s release, the Officer Krupke-style police bashing ‘New York City Cops’ – featuring the chorus of “New York City cops, they ain’t so smart” – was understandably pulled from the US version of the record. The seismic effect of 9/11 causes me to refrain from calling the album one that changed the world; however, it's impossible to deny the huge impact it had on 21st century popular music.

 

Albumaday... rating: 10/10

 

1.       Is This It – 2:35

2.       The Modern Age – 3:32

3.       Soma – 2:38

4.       Barely Legal – 3:54

5.       Someday – 3:07

6.       Alone, Together – 3:12

7.       Last Nite – 3:18

8.       Hard to Explain – 3:48

9.       New York City Cops – 3:36

10.   Trying Your Luck – 3:28

11.   Take It or Leave It – 3:16

Listen to ‘Trying Your Luck’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzCTobvdsxo

Also released on the 30^th July:

2002: Bruce Springsteen – The Rising

3rd Jan - The Stroke's First Impressions of Earth

Artist – Album: The Strokes – First Impressions of Earth

Released:  3^rd January 2006

Sounds Like: Billy Baldwin to Is This It’s Alec and Room On Fire’s Stephen

Had The Strokes began their nascent career with two slightly above average albums rather than the instant classic Is This Is It and the only moderately less brilliant Room On Fire, their unloved third album may have been received more warmly.

It certainly starts well, kicking off with the laid back cool of ‘You Only Live Once’ and following it by the hit single and red raw ‘Juicebox’. The rest of the album follows the example set by the former rather than the latter and that may have been part of the album’s downfall – listeners may well have wanted more of Julian Casablancas’ pained howling.

That’s not to say that the lyrics lack venom just because the delivery lacks bite. He’s still as vaguely (and pretty inexplicably) pissed off with everything as ever. And the album rocks in many places. It’s just that more often the words are sang not spat, and the music can at times be much softer. ‘Ask Me Anything’ actually brought to mind The Magnetic Fields. More than once I was reminded of the excellent Parisian band Phoenix. And maybe that’s what disappointed critics more than anything – where The Strokes once were the standard bearers, writing era-defining tunes, the band that everybody wanted to emulate; their third attempt sounds just a bit too much like everybody else.

Albumaday... rating:   7/10

1. You Only Live Once – 3:09
2. Juicebox – 3:17
3. Heart in a Cage – 3:27
4. Razorblade – 3:29
5. On the Other Side – 4:38
6. Vision of Division – 4:20
7. Ask Me Anything – 3:12
8. Electricityscape – 3:33
9. Killing Lies – 3:50
10. Fear of Sleep – 4:00
11. 15 Minutes – 4:34
12. Ize of the World – 4:29
13. Evening Sun – 3:06
14. Red Light – 3:11

    Listen to ‘Juicebox’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoltwBHXCx8