Criticizing The Strokes’ new album is a little like criticizing Pamela Anderson’s acting abilities. You know you’re not the first, but you sort of think it misses the point. The real issue isn’t the inherent merits of the matter addressed, but the celebrity of some things that were artificially inflated.
The Strokes are often called a post-punk garage band. Generally, rock critics use the term “punk” because they wish, while wanting to still pretend an interest in things purely musical, to hide their true reasons for feeling an affection for a group, emotions which almost always have less to do with the band members’ musicianship than their philosophy, personal style and politics.
I sincerely doubt, for instance, that any rock writer penning a flattering article on the members of the current group Blood or Whiskey really thinks that their sheet music or their singing stands comparison with Steely Dan or Stevie Wonder (to say nothing of Schubert). Rather, they mean to find a term that gussies up the causes of their actual infatuation: for the band’s nihilism, their skinny asses and their hair cuts. Better to reference the Ramones and Lou Reed than to say that.
The Strokes were therefore a source of pure joy for lazy music critics. They looked and sounded somewhat punk, but they were enough of a traditional rock group that they could also play to middle-class kids who expected a melody now and again. And their reliance on simple guitar and drum arrangements fit in with the marketing angle by which they presented themselves as a real garage band arisen from the streets of New York.
Moreover, the group saw something that others had missed. While every other band was taking its style cues from old Dylan LPs or ‘80s hair metal, the Strokes saw that young people no longer cared for any of this. Picking up on the example of local kids who were into basketball and video games, they showed up in sneakers, thrift store pants and team jerseys. Uniformly tall and slim, they had the new look—so much so that every band since has posed themselves in publicity photos to look almost exactly like them. And because their lead singer is the son of the founder of the Elite Modeling Agency and a former Miss Denmark, there were always gorgeous women at their first concerts. This attracted men.
Brilliant videos augmented their trendy but seemingly uncorrupted image. More press, of course, was generated by the affair that then sprung up between drummer Fabrizio Moretti and movie star Drew Barrymore.
For all their artistic pretensions, the band’s concern for business is such that their website includes contact information for their principal accountant and links to buy their t-shirts, key rings and branded posters. Lead singer Julian Casablancas has even married their somewhat plain-looking manager Juliet Roslin.
Yet the music from the band’s first two albums has proved forgettable. Our J.R. Taylor notes that you hardly ever hear anyone playing their songs on city jukeboxes; the failure of the band to produce meaningful record sales has prompted one wag to called them “no-hit wonders.”
But whose fault is it that the band has been overhyped? Is it the band’s fault or the media’s?
How ironic is it, then, that the Strokes new album contains quite a few catchy tunes and one song, “Electrictyscape”, that sounds very much like a hit? Full of grand emotion and layered sound, The Strokes’ new CD has some distinctly appealing music on it. Not all of this is original; in particular, the song “Jukebox” uses a tune suspiciously reminiscent of the Ventures’ “Walk Don’t Run.” and Casablancas’ mimicking of Jim Morrison’s singing is rather shameless. But, nonetheless, it isn’t a bad album at all. The main problems with First
