Music
The Strokes
First Impressions of Earth (RCA)On “Ask Me Anything,” track seven on the new Strokes record, First Impressions of Earth, there isn’t a trace of distortion in singer Julian Casablancas’ voice. He sounds a little like Lou Reed and a little like Leonard Cohen, and the track is pensive and pulses with a lumbering keyboard loop. “I’ve got nothing to say,” he repeats at least a dozen times in a tone of achy resignation. “We could drag it out / But that’s for other bands to do / I’ve got nothing to say,” he continues. But don’t believe the hype. This record is big, heavy and meaty, and on fire with songs about love, frustration, writing and the isolation that so often accompanies fame.
When Casablancas asked, “Is this it?” on the Strokes’ debut album in 2001, he didn’t seem to be surveying the postmodern landscape and summing up some universal conundrum with a simple, pointed question. Purveyors of the neo-garage rock, these guys were New Yorkers—cool, sexy, remote and well-connected. This was a band that’d been hyped to the moon and back before their record even hit the bins. Their songs weren’t statements so much as mumbled exhalations—snapshots of a big city life lived after last call on the right side of the velvet rope.
Critics were quick to note how derivative the band were—all those throwbacks to Television, the Velvet Underground and The Stooges. And suddenly it became more about the fact that they’d ripped off an intro to a Tom Petty song and less that their facility for transcending those influences had changed the rock landscape yet again.
The Strokes have always sounded like The Strokes, though, even if it’s their version of a borrowed mathematical rock grid. The down-stroked guitars, the distorted vocals and that detached listlessness in Casablancas’ voice—it’s all instantly identifiable. And they helped derail the nu-metal chart dominance at the turn of the century to pave the way for all those “The” bands that were crowding the underground. What was once called indie-rock is now just rock and The Strokes are partly to thank for that.
But they’ve never quite accepted this responsibility. It was as if they opted to pass on the opportunity to be a voice of a generation and instead decided to stay behind the curtain, safe from attack. They toured relentlessly but never jumped to the stadium circuit. And their second album, Room on Fire, showed them doing exactly what they were supposed to these days in the rock world—not taking risks.
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Where was the smoke? Like the pivotal scene in Garden State where Zach Braff’s character sits frozen and blank on a couch while a whirlwind of girls, drug use and life buzzes around him, Casablancas’ voice always sounds grounded in a state of muted observation. He’s there, and raw life is all around him, but he’s unmoved by it.
Until now. The title First Impressions of Earth is something of a misnomer for The Strokes, because the record sounds fresh out of the trenches of life on earth. It sounds raw and vital, bigger and more urgent, and a little like a response to the hype, expectation and criticism permanently etched into the band’s story. Here, guitarists Nick Valensi and Albert Hammond’s bright, metal-lite shredding gets free range, while Fab Moretti’s drums rattle to delirious proportions and Nikolai Fraiture’s bass cranks up to a thunderclap. Casablancas’ vocals and lyrics also show evidence of expansion, trading his disaffected, distorted cool for rage, introspection and even tenderness. Additionally, Casablancas is a newlywed, and the frequency of relationship talk on the record seems to point to personal as well as artistic growth.
There’s the single, of course—“Juicebox”—where a menacing, classic rock riff steamrolls through three minutes of glowing heat, alternately upended by Casablancas’ mellifluous voice and the raging line, “Why won’t you come over here / We got a city to love.” But then there are tracks like “Razorblade,” which, when Casablancas opines, “My feelings are more important than yours,” sounds drowned in a brow-furrowing, sweeping earnestness. With its lazy beat and big wash of a glistening bittersweet guitar riff, it’s surprisingly reminiscent of the chorus of the Barry Manilow song “Mandy”—if Manilow had thought about rocking.
“You Only Live Once” ought to be next in line for singlehood if only because it’s so straightforward in its pop appeal. It’s a tidy, feel-good reminder about the brevity of life and the pointlessness of sweating the small stuff—all over a lackadaisical, strutting beat with guitars that evoke a summertime friskiness.
Elsewhere, the record amps up the dynamism with “Heart in a Cage,” which bangs and grooves along with taut precision and more shredding, while “Vision of Division” shows impressive elasticity, alternating between a sleepy lounge vibe and pounding prog-rock. And all the while, little gems of lucidity in Casablancas’ lyrics attest to his perceptual openness.
It’s not just that Casablancas howls, “You’re no fuunnnnn” in “Fear of Sleep,” or that in “On the Other Side,” he admits he’s “Tired of everyone I know / Tired of everyone I see.” It’s that he’s finally telling us something about himself, three records into the band’s career.
Casablancas’ drunken bellow on “15 Minutes” sounds a bit like Sid Vicious doing “My Way.” And when he screams with disgust, “Everybody at the party / Shouldn’t worry what they wear / ’cause today they’ll talk about us / And tomorrow they won’t care,” it’s clear Casablancas has gotten off the couch and started participating.
In the stunning “Electricityscape,” he laments, “With strangers to impress so near / Old friends don’t realize I’m here / I wish two drinks were always in me / I’d pretend I had the perfect ear.” Then, his voice cracks sadly over the lines, “And you’re closer now / I know / You belong on the radio,” making success sound like an indictment.
Taken together, these tracks paint a stark picture of a band endlessly auditioning, forever onstage, subjected to a combination of hostile external forces and swirling internal pressures—the kind that can too easily turn triumph into despair. For a band whose singer has claimed numerous times he has nothing to say, that’s saying an awful lot.