There’s a new record from The Strokes. It’s just about what you’d expect, from a modestly-good band attempting to re-create past glory while simultaneously insisting on their potential to become something new. Which is to say: it studiously refuses to sound like Is This It? while revealing that The Strokes are constitutionally incapable of actually sounding all that different from Is This It?
The mixture that results isn’t bad – though it isn’t all that great either. There are a lot of tracks that seem to be trying to do something interesting, while still adopting the form of a classic Strokes track. The problem, of course, is that the form of a classic Strokes track is incredibly simplistic. It provides an exceptionally dully background against which to work. The magic of the band was never any musical sophistication – it was the energy they could squeeze out of basic tropes.
Under Cover Of Darkness – The Strokes
There are some good songs, though. Most notably this one, which is lanky and joyful and unencumbered by the sort of pretension that ruins some other tracks.
Anyways, while we’re on the subject of bands working off the old Strokes blueprint, why not take a listen to Soft Pipes?
Stay Pretty – Soft Pipes
I heard this song at Knox Road, and my first impulse was to wish desperately that the new Strokes record sounded like this. The movement here is relentless, but measured, and with great purpose. Just like it’s supposed to be.