"Angles" by The Strokes: A Review
NEIRAD enilno edition
A few years ago, The Strokes were the next big thing. The media declared them the heirs to the Nirvana legacy, the band that would champion the new musical movement in rock and roll and knock the current cheese-genre off the map with one album. For Nirvana, the movement was grunge, the album was “Nevermind”, and the victim was bloated hair metal. For The Strokes, the movement was garage-rock revival, the album was “Is This It?” and the victim was angsty nu-metal. The Strokes were a quintessential New York band, sound forged from the coolest of the city’s sub-cultural niches, from the experimentalism of No-Wave to the hazy drone of the Velvet Underground. The Strokes’ main attraction was their front man, the moody, hard-drinking, leather-clad Julian Casablancas, armed with the groggy charisma of Lou Reed and a voice that could float between a sleepy croon and a violent animal scream.
The release of the previously mentioned “Is This It?” secured The Strokes’ place in pop culture history. Among other similar lists, the album made Rolling Stone’s list of the top 500 albums of all time. Its tales of urban despair driven by punchy up-tempo garage rock made them critical darlings and kick-started a miniature revolution, with bands like The Libertines and Franz Ferdinand following, and bands like the White Stripes rising up with them. The Strokes became rock’s big hope, the drummer dated Drew Barrymore, Casablancas kicked drinking, they released two follow-up albums, and then vanished, several of the members scurrying off to release solo projects during the hiatus to varying degrees of success.
So now The Strokes are back with “Angles,” their first album in nearly five years. How is one supposed to react? On the one hand, I suppose a Strokes fan should be giddy, and indeed the breaking of the long hiatus has given the album extra hype and buzz. But somehow the album doesn’t at all feel like a triumphant comeback; it feels more like a band that is no longer too relevant trying to fit in again. Indeed, the age of The Strokes has definitely passed.
Contemporaries The White Stripes and the Libertines have broken up, the prior band recently and the latter band messily. Garage rock revival, apart from spawning a few decent bands like The Hives and Franz Ferdinand, was never as big or influential as music critics predicted. And The Strokes, of course, were not around to salvage the movement.
The album itself is not bad per se; in fact it has more than a few moments of pure-power pop genius. The opener “Machu Picchu” is an impressive cherry bomb of a tune; Casablancas’s fluttery vocal melody, Fabrizio Moretti’s sporadic drum beats and Nick Valensi’s snarling catchy guitar-riff chorus easily make this the strongest track on the album. “Call Me Back” is a close second, an experimental track that manages to achieve a certain level of rawness that the rest of the album can’t, mostly due to Casablancas’s fantastic vocal performance; he sings here like a heartbroken man crooning over a crackling payphone at three in the morning, with a panache that reminded me why I liked the guy so much in the first place. And “Gratisfaction” is endearingly up-tempo and hooky, closely resembling Steely Dan steeped in punchy distortion.
Unfortunately, the rest of the album is filled with too many failed experiments and directionless melodies for it to be a totally satisfying listen. Songs like the closer “Life Is Simple In the Moonlight,” the single “Under Cover of Darkness,” and galloping “Two Kinds of Happiness” drone on and on trying desperately to turn into earworms but never quite taking off. The band’s attempts at style evolution come out sounding like mediocre imitations of other current outfits. “Games,” a limp noodle of a song is so New Wave electronic heavy it almost sounds like Goldfrapp. “Metabolism” comes off like a cross between the soundtrack to a Super Mario Bros. game and bad Muse. In fact, a lot of the album sort of sounds like bad Muse.
Members of the Strokes
There are two overbearing problems with the album that transcend all the weak tracks, however. First, is the 80’s New Wave influence. An increasingly popular and consistently terrible trend emerging in music is taking the 80’s pill, decking out albums in synthesizers and early-MTV pop melodies in an attempt to both throw back and move forward. Be it Mark Ronson, The Killers, or (to a very small but mentionable degree) Vampire Weekend, the 80’s infusion has never sounded good, only kitschy at best. Casablancas took the 80’s pill when he recorded his solo effort, the sporadically adequate “Phrazes for the Young.” His debut single “11th Dimension” was catchy, but so drenched in cheesy synth-pop sound effects it could have been a Human League song. Most of “Angles” sounds a lot like “Phrazes for the Young” and not in a good way. The 80’s influence on “Angles” is not as overbearing as “Phrazes”, but nevertheless, the occasional synthesizers and the hokey space-age Cosby sweater of an album cover ultimately weigh it down.
Second, the production is the worst ever for a Strokes album. The songs are utterly drained of all flaws, but in a detrimental fashion. One of the great things about Strokes classics like “Reptilia” and “Juicebox” were that they were both tight and messy, never chaotic but sometimes almost on the verge of unraveling. At their best they were (forgive the sacrilege) almost Stooges-esque. Casablancas especially, could be a complete animal on vocals when he needed to be; the sound of his vocal chords utterly shredding in the epic chorus crescendo of “Juicebox” never fails to give me chills. But on “Angles” the band is boa-constrictor tight, without a note out of place. No soul, no fury, and no grime are allowed to thrive here; the songs are so polished that they almost hurt the ears.
So what exactly is “Angles” all about? It’s certainly not The Strokes’ triumphant return; in fact, it’s hardly The Strokes at all. On “Angles” they want to be grimier versions of Phoenix, LCD Soundsystem, and Crystal Castles, to such an extent that they completely lose focus. Perhaps this is a result of the fact that The Strokes are hardly even reunited at all. Apparently, in an act straight from the “Wes Anderson directing Fantastic Mr. Fox from his iPhone” school of ego stunts, Casablancas was not present at most of the recording sessions and sent in most of his vocal contributions. This lack of unity supposedly (to put it lightly) irked some of the band, which means tensions are far from over between them.
This album does not mean that The Strokes are over. At the very least they are playing better than ever, the guitars and drums are electrifying and complex where the melodies are not. Still, The Strokes need to learn that the whole reason they got anywhere in the first place was that they sounded not only new and different but also pure and meaningful. In an article for New York Magazine, Jay McInerney suggested that their landmark single, “Last Nite” was the anthem of the post 9-11 era, and indeed The Strokes felt like the first post-9-11 rock stars, a paragon of a New York band, angry, gritty, and paranoid, but powered with such shiny melodies that spirits were lifted, not brought down. Now, years later, The Strokes have basically nothing to say, a result no doubt of the end of the Bush era and Casablancas’s sobriety (rule number one of good art, it runs on unhappiness). Still, there can always be another album, and someone still needs to drive off the new wave of soul crushing music championed by, among others, a band responsible for the worst Superbowl Halftime Show in history (Black Eyed Peas), an ex-stripper who wants to be Madonna but is actually just a fake weirdo (Lady Gaga), a fake musician who wants to be both a stripper and Lady Gaga and claims to be influenced by the (yeah right) Talking Heads (Ke$ha), and of course the Biebs. It’s high time for that Strokes/Nirvana legacy to be revived and if The Strokes can’t do it with their follow-up efforts (which is unfortunately, almost 100% certain), whatever band or musician does will be undeniably indebted to them.
