Facebook is telling me that 20 years ago today, “Is This It?” by The Strokes was released. I never bothered my arse with that album, on the grounds that I already had “Horses” and “Marquee Moon” and the lead singer had a rich dad who was a big shot in fashion. So folks, was I wrong? Do I need to do what I did with “Kid A,” and actually listen to the thing now that, in my old age, I am no longer afflicted by the snobberies which troubled my youth?
The Strokes “Is This It?” – Do I have to?
Well put it like this, it’s got a few decent tunes and it’s only 35 minutes long. It’s quite likely you’ve listened to worse this month already.
Bit of a cheek to knock the singer for having a rich dad when you, yourself, are here on this very thread boasting about owning horses.
and a moon in a tent
ARF!
No question mark in the title.
Relax ladies, I’m married.
It’s great, but Room On Fire is better.
I also frequently argue this point. Room On Fire is their best!
It’s a good album, but a new dawn, and the most important album of the 21st century? Nah.
A triumph of the NME wetting themselves (again)
(In fairness, the century was only a year old at the time)
Don’t think it sounds like either of those releases. It’s a decent pop album.
It was one of those albums that was hyped to absolute buggery…and was decent-ish, at best. I liked Hard to Explain, but the rest was a very samey, retro record. It felt like an album made by a bunch of posers – a Calvin Klein poster in music form.
It was a curious time, as Britpop was well and truly dead, and the NME was desperate for one of those culturally important groups it could stick on the cover every other week.
They were undoubtedly super hyped by the music press, but I reckon they probably would have been at just about any time, because their look was so strong. The black and white photo of them all in a bar is/was the NME’s absolute dream of what a bunch of musicians should look like.
Hype aside, I enjoyed the music. The first album has some great tunes on it (Last Nite, Take It Or Leave It, Hard to Explain, Someday, etc), Room on Fire is grand, and even First Impressions of Earth has You Only Live Once on it. I also quite enjoyed the Casablancas solo outing: Phrazes For The Young. He does have a pretty great/distinctive voice, and 11th Dimension is a bop.
The “rich parents” thing has never really bothered me. It wasn’t held against Carly Simon, Win Butler, Lars Ulrich or Gram Parsons to the same extent (or at least it shouldn’t have been), although I guess none of them made a career of posing in thrift store clothing in New York dive bars. It doesn’t make any difference to the music, anyway.
What I’ve really never understood is the Television thing. They might have dressed a little bit like them and hung out in similar places, but they never actually sounded like Television or Patti Smith, did they?
It’s not the greatest album of the 21st century, but it was never going to be. It’s fundamentally a party record, and should be treated accordingly. I’m not sure they ever had any real artistic pretensions in their music; the goal always just seemed to be to be the coolest bar band in town and to have a good time, which they did. For a while.
Should ganglesprocket listen to it? Probably not. It’s not really a question of “needing” to listen to it; you’re not missing out on some sort of massive cultural event if you don’t do so. It’s not like you missed out on The Vines.
Oh for fuck’s sake I came here to say basically all of this, but worse.
It’s 2001 in my hee-aaad.
Thank you Bingo! You have persuaded me here, I will not bother.
Yes because rockstars so rarely resort to posing. *sideways look to camera*
I quite agree, Diddley – Bolan was the biggest poser of all time, but he backed it up with a fair smack of talent.
True.
There was a bit of a thing with new guitar music at that time that was quite refreshing. You had Franz Ferdinand, Killers, The Strokes, Razorlight, Libertines, Kaiser Chiefs etc. Some made decent debut albums but it was all over pretty quick. Not particularly original but lively new wave kind of pop. Mr Brightside endures as a classic but not much else. The Strokes have gone on to have a pretty good career of decent albums. Their most recent was a bit of a cracker. With their debut they slung together a bunch of hip influences but still sounded like themselves. Not much like Patti Smith, more like late seventies new wave, and a bit Lou Reed. Julian’s got the charisma and attitude for a great front man. Is This It? is a great bunch of pop tunes. Everything doesn’t have to be groundbreaking. Very little is anyway.
Yeah, that’s a very fair summary and the Lou Reed comparison is the one. Is This It sounds to me like Loaded played at 150% the regular speed by people on different drugs to Lou and with dramatically better barnets.
The only thing I would say is that the Killers did ultimately prove to be a legitimately great band with enduring appeal. It’s not just Mr Brightside, they have a pretty stacked library of tunes at their fingertips and are fabulous live. Again, they wear their influences on their sleeve and they’re not great innovators, but they don’t need to be. They will never be critical darlings, but they will always give people a great time, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
I could have been more generous to The Killers. They do good pop, or did. Not sure if newer material cuts it.
They went off the boil for about 10 years but their last one last year is good
Is This It is a great album. I never really bonded with what came after (apart from Julien’s great cameo with Daft Punk). At the time it wore its Velvets influences on its sleeve but had enough good tunes and humour to get away with it.
I couldn’t care less how much their parents are worth, but I’ve noticed from listening to the Chart Music podcast that the English seem to be a bit obsessed about the privilege and politics of musos. If you don’t listen to/like the album because they had rich parents, more fool you.
In contrast,, because everyone else seems to be comparing them, I bought the Killers debut album when it came out, listened to it twice and haven’t listened since. I should probably give it another spin.
It’s still played in our house & our 20 year old loves it too. I agree that it’s a party record & a good one at that.
Reminds me of when skinny jeans made such a big comeback; now they’re going out of fashion again…
I am horrified that skinny jeans are heading back out of fashion. Horrified.
I spent my teenage years wearing jeans that made me look like I was atop two denim cooling towers. I do hope we’re not going back to that.
It’s wide leg & comfy fit jeans that are about to be everywhere & skinnies will look totally ridiculous.
Fashion, eh?
Both my teenage daughters are in wide leg jeans and smallish tops, under fairly capacious hoodies or fleeces. FLEECES. The 90s are back, lads, do not adjust your set.
I actually really like the new iteration of 90s gear, as horrified as I am by the idea of my youth-wear being old enough to have come around again. Being something of a clobber spendthrift, it’s led to me buying some excellent trousers lately on the Mr Porter sale, and that is to be wildly encouraged. Though not by my bank manager.
“The 90s are back”. Moosey, our time has come at last!
Try it. It’s good fun. It’s only half an hour of your time and you can be doing something else when it plays.
It was lauded at the time because it’s white boys playing guitars at a time when rock critics loved white boys playing guitars. It’s not an earth-shattering artistic statement.
Last Nite is a terrific tune and there are some other good ones on the album. I don’t need to play it though because our 18 and 20 year old kids play it all the time. Interesting…maybe it’s the same kind of thing as me liking the Velvets and The Doors in 1982.
Last Nite is OK but far away from anything I would listen to now.
I put it into Spotify and it was followed by Common People by Pulp…that is much better and a regularly listened to tune.
Yes, I do see what you mean there. And Common People is indeed a much better tune with lyrics to match.
Surely Common People wore out it’s welcome years ago. Rudimentary music. Some good lyrics, not much more. Always thougt Babies was one of Pulp’s best. They have others better than CP too. Year 2000 for one.
All of We Love Life, for a start.
Common People is still ace.
But This Is Hardcore is peak Pulp. You can’t be a spectator, oh no.
It’s a good album. It doesn’t sound like the two you mentioned. Did you mean, you already owned two records, and felt that was plenty enough music? 😉
The tight arrangements and use of counter melodies were quite unusual at the time. There wasn’t a lot else around in the genre which was constructed with that level of precision and minimalism.
Their latest is also pretty good btw.
Nah, but the NME seemed to keep saying that The Strokes were the rebirth of the whole CBGBs things, and the photos all looked very Patti Smith and Television-y. I have literally not a clue if the music is, because I’ve never played it.
The Strokes, a failure of image over music, in that the image put me right off even bothering with the music which, the people who like it, mainly seem to just like it. I guess if you like the image it’s a triumph of image over music then?
You know though, I always liked The White Stripes though…
I liked the look at the time (I was a student) but I’m a lot more allergic to youth hype these days too.
I think a lot of “movements” start with someone bold and refreshing, and then a lot of sub-par stuff follows and ends up semi-defining it. The White Stripes lead to a lot of 2-piece copies and I think, similarly, The Strokes were the good band that at least reinvigorated something which wasn’t really happening at the time.
It’s still a good record and I’d recommend the follow up. (Skip their third album though! That’s where the wheels came off.)
They may have been overhyped, but it’s a good album for coming up and getting the party started: “Soma” or “Barely legal” sound good on headphones coming out of the door. I associate them, along with Fennesz’s “Endless summer”, with that slightly more carefree moment in 2001 before 9/11.
If you read this thread it will take longer than listening to the album.
But this tread is full of wit and wisdom! It’s well worth the 36 minutes I have spent reading it.
It’s incredibly derivative of earlier threads though 😉
This thread only got this far because it has rich parents
Arf!
The mistake here is referencing the NME for anything at all post 1983ish. Some would say earlier.
I mean other publications would have made you aware of this album without the NME bollocks, especially tiresome at this time.
I remember there being a certain amount of hype about the Strokes but, by then no longer reading the inkies, most of it passed me by. I did, however, remember thinking they looked like a proper gang from their photos – post britpop music had hit a trough and you could feel something new was needed. Oasis had put out a truly tedious album of overlong tunes once again. Hard drugs had seen to many of the other contenders.
I was watching The Pops and The Strokes ‘New York City Cops’ was introduced. I was mighty impressed – of course there were derivative elements, but I liked the conciseness, the distorted vocals that cut through nonetheless and the guitar interplay. Two and a half minutes later and it was back to B*witched and Robbie.
When the album came out I bought it from Brixton WH Smiths (“what’s it called?” said the young black girl behind the till, “White arse?”) I still play it occasionally now, and it’s still great. 35 minutes or so, all sass and studied cool, big tunes, you can jump around to it. Yes, it’s contrived, but so is most music. They went off the boil after that, with the exception of the amazing “Juicebox”, but they leave one of the great debuts. Give it a spin sometime, and turn it up.
A pompous idiot I know told me at some length that they are not a “proper” band, whatever that means. I have the album and liked it though I haven’t played it for probably decades.