The Strokes

[La bordélique]

Yep! Even better than Under Cover of Darkness!

 

[Jared]

Agreed, March 21 can't come soon enough!

 

[ckgirlbr]

The Strokes
'Angles'
The sexiest candidates for early-aughts rock salvation finally allow us to fall in lust again
Spin Rating 8 of 10

You can blame the Strokes for a lot of stuff, including but certainly not limited to Jet, Levi's new Ex-Girlfriend Jean, and the ongoing lame-ification of Manhattan's East Village and Lower East Side. What you can't do, though, is accuse them of lacking a strong sense of self.
After five years of booming Bowery-Boy business, rock's most radiant retro combo went on hiatus following 2006's First Impressions of Earth, just in time for a worldwide economic crisis nobody needed to hear a Strokes song about. Now, as the gloom gradually lifts and Grammy winners Arcade Fire await inspiration from atop Mount Significance, Julian Casablancas and his bros slouch back to life with a fourth album that reminds you why they were so irresistible in the first place.
The only Strokes record written collaboratively as a band (Casablancas previously held sway), Angles isn't a strict return to the bare-bones essentialism of Is This It. Neo-garage purists who balked at the slick keyboards and zany song structures on First Impressions are sure to be miffed by the echoing electro-pop beat in "Games" and the unctuous new-wave sheen of "Two Kinds of Happiness" (which nods to the Cars' "You Might Think"). But like the group's instant-classic early singles, swinging new tunes such as "Gratisfaction" (hey, it beats "Electricityscape") and "Under Cover of Darkness" tap into a giddy insouciance that feels distinctly Strokes-y. "I've been all around this town," Casablancas declares on the latter, "Everybody's been singing the same song for ten years." Reads like a complaint, right? Not as the frontman delivers the line. Cushioned by the sweet shimmy of Nick Valensi and Albert Hammond Jr.'s interlocking guitars, Casablancas sounds reassured by the familiarity.
On First Impressions, the Strokes tried to deepen their downtown cool with a skeptical examination of their own celebrity; Casablancas was after something similar with his 2009 solo album Phrazes for the Young. ("I live on the frozen surface of a fireball," he sang in that album's "11th Dimension.") When they go for depth here -- which they do on a handful of slower, quieter cuts -- the route isn't bitterness, but a kind of pop-philosophical wonderment. "I look for you and you look for me," Casablancas croons in "Call Me Back," a spacey ballad layered with lush vocal harmonies. What he's on about is anyone's guess, yet there's a disarming innocence to his tone that only increases the music's charm. The same goes for the album's gorgeous closer, "Life Is Simple in the Moonlight," where Casablancas recounts watching "animals on TV singing about something that they once felt."
That warmhearted vibe is all the more surprising considering how difficult the band members claim Angles was to make, thanks initially to inter-band conflicts, then to an aborted partnership with producer Joe Chiccarelli. (The band ultimately rerecorded some of the songs themselves at Hammond's home studio.) Of course, that creative sleight of hand has been these guys' M.O. since their very first single, "The Modern Age," in which Casablancas offered a bit of advice -- "Work hard and say it's easy" -- that too many of the group's neo-garage successors seemed to willfully reverse.
On Angles, the Strokes' trick isn't fooling us into thinking these tunes fell to Stanton Street fully formed (though that occasionally happens, as with the goofy fake-reggae lark "Machu Picchu"). It's that a group of reunited rock stars somehow come on like wide-eyed kids.
By Mikael Wood

spin.com

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I've always loved their album closers (Take it or Leave it, Red Light ) and this is no exception I also like this better than Under Cover of Darkness. Wow this is The Strokes I've missed so much. thank you my dear.
I don't even mind Miley wearing The Strokes shirt, their performance was great.

 

[*ana*]

ooh i really like the new song!
so good to see them playing live! and SO good to finally see mr. casablancas without his sunglasses! (and feathers)

 

[ckgirlbr]

Machu Pichu (http://lullaterry.tumblr.com/post/3747580331/approximatelyinfinite-the-strokes-machu-picchu)

Taken for a fool (http://mysamstown.tumblr.com/post/3748027440/the-strokes-taken-for-a-fool)

Life is Simple... & UCOD are still my favorite songs that were released.

 

[dorien]

can't believe tickets for their MSG show are already sold out,
well, not that i can't believie, i don't want to.

i need tickets!

 

[Jared]

The whole new album is available now to listen on their website.
http://new.thestrokes.com/
Enjoy!

 

[HeatherAnne]

^ And your thoughts Jared? I haven't had time to give a proper listen quite yet.

Here is a really incredible track by track walk through with Julian from NME's blog:

Julian Casablancas' Track By Track Guide To The Strokes 'Angles'

Machu Picchu
“There are lyrics about keeping yourself busy: ‘I’m just trying to find a mountain I can climb', and Machu Picchu is the Inca sacred place in the Andean mountains of Peru. So the title started out as a joke, but then the joke just started to seem fitting.”
Under Cover Of Darkness
“It’s about someone who works in the military, and has a girlfriend. It’s cheesy, I guess, but it’s about having to leave a loved one. I weirdly like the bridge and the chorus of that Clarence Clemons song [‘You’re A Friend Of Mine’, a 1985 duet with Jackson Browne, and US Top 20 hit –’80s crap pop ed]: (sings) “Years may come and goooo!” So that was the vibe we were going for. I shouldn’t confess to these things!”
Two Kinds Of Happiness
“It’s weird how people say they want to ‘be happy’ when it’s really two separate things: one is long term, one is short term, and they don’t have anything to do with each other. One is… well, I kind of don’t think I need to give examples, do I?”
You're So Right
“I had some early REM vibes for a minute or two. It’s a darker one. It counters some of the happy vibes on the other tracks. I like dark things!”
Taken For A Fool
“With regards the line ‘Monday/Tuesday is my weekend’, I originally wanted to say 'Sunday/Monday/ Tuesday' but it didn’t fit. Those were always my favourite nights to go out. I’m not into going out on Friday or Saturday - never have been. I like empty-ish bars.”
Games
“We had guitars on it originally, but it just sounded better to me without them. It definitely has a different vibe for us. There’s a lot of weird stuff on that song: most of the weird sounds are drums that we messed with. The part at the end of the song is so old, we’ve had it for about 10 years, at least.”
Call Me Back
“We just wanted a slow one. The chorus was a mixture of some parts that we had. That song just kind of… showed up! I can’t remember, I’ve heard it too much. I like it.”
Gratisfaction
“It’s a sound that I usually hate, but when they were doing the background vocals on the chorus, I was trying to get [engineer/producer] Gus [Oberg] to get that, like, Boston chorus sound. You think it sounds like Steely Dan? Yeah, I suppose that’s kind of in the right vein!”
Metabolism
“I’ve had that one for a while. I had something completely different in mind at the outset to what it is. It became something else entirely, but I’m… fine with it as it is now.”
Life Is Simple In The Moonlight
“That’s probably my favourite on the album. The verse was a random old Brazilian thing I had, but it works well with the chorus. I like the chorus: it gives me cheesy/happy chorus vibes.”
-nme

 

[*ana*]

besides under cover of darkness i like life is simple in the moonlight, gratisfaction, taken for a fool... some songs, if i listened to them and didn't know it was the strokes, i'd probably think it was just a band whose singer sounded a lot like julian. they said it would sound more is this it than their previous album, but it doesn't sound like that at all to me. some songs are even closer to phrazes than to is this it or room on fire. it's weird to think it was a more "group" work, and not just what julian wanted. i thought that since they were all making decisions, it would sound more like their older work...

 

[ckgirlbr]

^You said it all, *ana*. I gave the album a second listen, I like some songs such as Machu Picchu, Under Cover of Darkness, Gratisfaction and Life is Simple in the Moonlight. As for the others, as Ana pointed out, I would never guess they're by The Strokes... A local reviewer wrote Angles lacks rock which sums up all my thoughts. It's not a bad album, they're just taking a new direction now but I can't say I'm enjoying it. It doesn't sound more like Is This It at all as Fabrizio himself claimed (maybe he was referring to the aborted sessions with Joe Chicarelli), and for me a work group meant they'd go back to their old sound, not that Angles would sound more like Julian's solo work. Well, they're still my favorite band, but Angles is my least favorite Strokes album. I'm still happy they're back though, I hope Nick is right, that the best is still to come out.

 

[*ana*]

i'm really happy they're back too, but i agree, it does lack rock. nick said that thing about FIOE and the use of technology in music, that it can eventually sound dated because technology is always evolving... i think that applies to Angles as well. their previous work is a much more timeless rock. not that First Impressions doesn't have some great songs - i actually like many songs from that album. but julian seems to have this fascination with technology... this is what made me so apprehensive about the new album. to compare with another band i like: the libertines. for some reason, i'm just sure that if they record together again one day, it will be that same old rock they've always done, because it's pretty clear that that's what they're all about. now the strokes, i can't seem to get what they are all about. i'm not saying one band is better than the other, of course, but it's difficult for me to accept they're taking a new direction.
to quote an important philosopher of our time, "change isn't good. people say it is, but it's not".

 

[ckgirlbr]

^I was thinking about The Libs a few days ago and how 'true' (couldn't find a better word) they are to their style. I totally agree with you about ITI and ROF being timeless
On another note, they're on the April cover of Spin.


spin.com

And also an excerpt of the feature in the mag. http://www.spin.com/articles/strokes-behind-comeback

 

[HeatherAnne]

Okay, I've listened a few times through now.

The gems on the record for me are Taken for a Fool (AMAZING lyrics!) and Life is Simple in the Moonlight.

The only song I can not for the life of me get into is Gratisfication. Just too throwback, and a bit cheesy to me for The Strokes.

Like you both (ana and ckgirlbr) said they could have stayed a little truer to their rock roots, but we have to remember that The Strokes are a band who are known for their revolutionary music. Of course they are going to experiment with new things, and I think they did it brilliantly without losing the band's identity.

Ana, you talk of The Libertines [I love them also, for the record] not being likely to stray from their roots so much, but we have to remember that those roots of their's were inspired by The Strokes sound! It will be interesting to see if Angles sets off a similar rise of new bands in the same way that Is This It did. I certainly think it has the power to!

 

[*ana*]

oh yeah i remember they were inspired by them, but i also think they got an identity of their own, very english, unlike many other bands who just tried to sound like the strokes.
what you said about them making revolutionary music makes sense, but as nick said, it can sound dated (unlike last nite or reptilia, for example - it was different, but more timeless). maybe it's because i don't like a lot of experimentation with technology in music - although i did listen to phrazes for the young a zillion times. some people used to say room on fire was another is this it, i guess that's what i wanted: just many is this its.

anyway, when i first listened to the album i liked taken for a fool, now i'm addicted to it. maybe i'll start liking other songs as listen to them more and more. and god i really hope there'll be a 5th album!

 

[HeatherAnne]

Good points and discussion with you, as always, Ana. Now you have me wishing extra hard that The Libertines will make another album soon.

The songs grow on me with each listen too, and I imagine I'll love it even more when I don't have to listen to it off my computer! I look forward to a 5th album in the future, and I guess because of the manner that they all individually wrote songs for Angles also makes me really want another solo album from Julian, and Albert too. From what I've read it seems like this was a huge learning experience for them not only as a band but as individuals, so I want to see what they take from that and do in their own unique ways.

 

[ckgirlbr]

I didn't like Taken for a Fool at first, but after listening to it a few more times, I think it's one of the best songs of the album.
I'm also looking forward to a 5th album, of course, they would basically bring into action everything they learned from recording Angles, since it was a new experience for them, as HeatherAnne said

On another note, they're also selling a t-shirt (that comes with the album) on their website, I want it! Even if I usually don't wear band shirts.

 

[Jared]

^ And your thoughts Jared? I haven't had time to give a proper listen quite yet.

I've listened to it a good few times now, really like the album as a whole. Love Machu Picchu, Under Cover of Darkness, Taken for a Fool and Life is Simple in the Moonlight is just genius. There's also something I really like about You're So Right and it's dark undertones. And as always Nikolai's bass lines are amazing throughout the whole thing! Now I need to see how this record sounds played live

 

[*ana*]

can't wait. i was dying to see them playing this song live.

Tune in tonight to catch The Strokes’ perform “Taken For A Fool” on The Late Show with David Letterman at 11:35 pm EST on NBC. Check your local listings for times.

thestrokes.com

 

[Karen0193]

Just finished listening to Angles and my conclusion is that it's great! I'm shocked I actually liked it so much, the shorts songs kinds of makes me think this is like a reptilia with synthetizers. The songs are quite catchy and the bass line is great.

 

[HeatherAnne]

Love. This. Song. Julian's voice sounds great.