Review Summary: Remarkably fresh after all these years.
I was but a toddler when the Strokes first left their mark in the music world. I was not around for all of the publicity that surrounded them prior to the release of their debut, the NME hype monster that held the band up to a light of impractical proportions before anyone could even catch a glimpse of a widely distributed release. When I was first made aware of the Strokes (sophomore year of high school, almost 12 years after their debut album’s release), I was afforded the luxury of bypassing these great expectations. Even if the hype didn’t really have a lasting effect on the sheer quality of
Is This It, the fact that the album was old enough to be removed from all of the exposure, and more importantly the disappointment that followed, made the experience all the more intriguing when I picked a copy up from the local Best Buy one fall day.
Yet, it’s hard not to discuss the album without going into the backstory. The Strokes, while producing exceptional music, put image at high importance as well. The style and attire of the band matched that of a prototypical New York post-punk outfit; a time-tested formula for sure, but achieved with a more modern flair. When combined with the illusion of this “overnight success” reputation the Strokes received upon arrival, the result turned the band into poster childs for what was fashionable in 2001. Out of the garage-rock bands breaking out of obscurity and finding some forms of success, the Strokes became the go-to band for what was “cooler” than the rest.
Of course, all of that means moot as soon as the 8-track is heard winding itself back to introduce the album. After kicking things off with a slow-burning opener,
Is This It sprints through at a scorching pace that never gives in, with a runtime of just over half an hour. Some may call these songs homogenous, but they fail to see the slight nuances that shape the meticulously constructed structures over guitar tones and drumming that do not necessarily need to change very drastically. It’s a throwback to the golden era of post-punk, but there is a large pop aspect to the songs that help define what most refer to as That Strokes Sound. The guitars, manned by Albert Hammond Jr. and Nick Valensi, are placed at the forefront of the mix, yet remain carefully subdued with a faux-lo-fi tape hiss, dropping meticulously arranged solos here and there amidst the tight rhythm produced by drummer Fabrizio Moretti and bassist Nikolai Fraiture. Meanwhile, lead singer Julian Casablancas sleepily drawls his way through most of the songs, only raising his voice into an off-pitch howl when tracks such as “Alone, Together” and “Take It or Leave It” turn brusque. Such vocal characteristics would have disastrous results in any other genre (as proven by the obvious airbrush to Casablancas’ voice on his poppier solo excursions), but on
Is This It, with the help of the bold callbox distortion slathered over his voice, they feel at home, comfortably fitting within the slightly hazy production.
This allows the lyrics themselves to be placed on the back burner, but Casablancas manages to acquire a sense of sentimentality in his wording while appearing recklessly indifferent. The subject matters tends to lean toward the exact topics you’d expect five boozed-up kids stuck in a smoke-filled NYC basement to write about, but the sense of anything cliche is stripped clean. In its place, we get a prevalent amount of cutting-edge arrogance put on by the glorious drawl of Casablancas, who sounds pretty much like someone who is still partially wasted from the night before. Yet, in the midst of the large amount of slurred lines that are probably about sex, he manages to intertwine a surprising amount of sentimentality in his writing on tracks like “Someday”, where we find the singer self-aware of his newfound popularity: “In many ways, they’ll miss the good old days / Someday, someday / Yeah, it hurts to say, but I want you to stay / Sometimes, sometimes.”
But what makes this timeless, though, is the absolutely stunning songwriting. Each track here is pure pop gold, and insanely catchy on all levels. "The Modern Age" and "Barely Legal" chug along with charged drumbeats and unstable guitars, while "Last Nite" thumps in a bluesy shuffle. Even the weaker tracks like "New York City Cops" or "Soma", retain a level of consistency unparalleled in the Strokes' later work. Everything sounds concise, relentlessly conscientious of itself. Such a level of perfection, where everything just falls into place, is quite rare to find in the music world, and even more rare to repeat, as the current state of this band repeatedly reminds us. It leaves us with the question brought on by the title of the album: Is this it? For the Strokes, it sure is.
