blackleatherbookshelf | Entries tagged with the strokes

The Tin Men Find Their Hearts
4 Out Of 5 Stars

Talk about a departure. "Random Access Memories" retros the old EDM sound of previous albums and plants its flag squarely in the heart of 70's disco. So much so that Giorgio Morodor and Nile Rodgers are here in the flesh. Modern popster Pharrell Williams and Julian Casablancas of The Strokes are on board for what is a pretty wild ride on the wayback machine. Turns out the Robots (as Pharrell kept calling Daft Punk as they racked up Grammy Awards) have a heartbeat that pulses to "Le Freak."

This is some sunny, happy poptunes. "Get Lucky" (featuring Rodgers and Pharrell) was one of the best summer jams this or any year, inescapably warm and funky. "Give Life Back To Music" rides the same kind of funkiness and uses the autotuned vocals that you'd probably expect from Daft Punk in the first place. Yet there are those cameos that reveal the true memories of the duo. "Giorgio By Morodor" has the legendary producer giving a brief biography of his creative life while Daft Punk recreates some old school Munich disco straight off of the "Midnight Express" soundtrack. (I'm of the mindset that this is one of the collabs that didn't quite work.)

But for pure seventies oddballishness, you get 70's syrup-meister Paul Williams on the crescendo-ing "Touch." Paul Who? You may ask? Williams is a 70+ songwriter who can count among his credits Barbra Streisand, Helen Reddy and Kermit the Frog among his clients. When Daft Punk went mining for that pure 70's sound that "Random Access Memories" obviously was looking for, the boys did their homework.

Pure DP fans will still find traces of their old heroes on "Memories." "Motherboard" is a strictly instrumental piece that jitters with some interesting drum lines. The "Contact" finale, a six and a half minute opus featuring DJ Falcon, uses found sound and newsbites to muse about UFO's and aliens among us. It's a rollicking space ride worthy of standing next to everything else on "Random Access Memories." Daft Punk may have done a massive shift for this album, but it's a satisfying one and may have made this their masterwork.

Current Mood: happy
Current Location: Philadelphia
Current Music: "Get Lucky" Daft Punk

Comedown, Come Up
4 Out Of 5 Stars

The Strokes' "Comedown Machine" sounds like it just dropped down from the mid-80's. There's plenty of skritchy guitar work and an overabundance of synthesizers, with Julian Casablacas both singing in a falsetto and in his usual distorted style. You may think I exaggerate, but the first time I heard "One Way Trigger," I was prepared for the band to break into a cover of A-ha's "Take On Me." Yes, it's that derivative.

At the same time, it's absolutely The Strokes. It may be hard to believe, but this album is arriving 10 years after the mucho hyped debut of "Is This It," so anyone expecting The Strokes not to mature a bit probably needs to do a little growing up themselves. The band themselves acknowledge this on "All The Time" as the plead "You're livin' too fast," and as they explore dance rhythms on "Welcome To Japan," which is something the older, more hyper-active Strokes would have not bothered with in their younger days.

"Comedown Machine" is sometimes a bit too much of a vacuum production-wise, as, like "Angles," the sound is often cleaner and slicker than a whistle. That doesn't stop The Strokes from indulging in a bit of experimentation, like the title track or the ghostly falsetto on "Call It Fate Call It Karma." (Somebody's been listening to their old Iron and Wine albums...) "Comedown Machine" is a fun album from a band that has gotten old enough to have lost that early exuberance, but not too old to settle for a conformist view of album making.

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Current Mood: hyper
Current Location: Philadelphia
Current Music: "One Way Trigger" The Strokes

Inside Job
3 Out Of 5 Stars

The Kooks are one of the many bands to rise from the wake of the Arctic Monkeys' success, with "Inside in/Inside Out" roughly the same time "Whatever People Say I Am" did. Also like many Brit Bands to debut in this period, the sound of The Strokes informs The Kooks' garage-guitars, along with a kind of all-us-guys band rush that makes this album well worth a listen. There's plenty of three minute power-shots scattered around "Inside In/Inside Out" to kick up the adrenaline.

What helps The Kooks stand out is that bandleader Luke Pritchard (vocals/guitar) can write songs that add dimension to the album. "Eddie's Gun" may come across as a punky-pressure cooker, but it is followed up by "Ooh La," an acoustic mid-tempo number based on an acoustic riff. There's a goodly amount of lead guitar that rises above the garage level, courtesy of Hugh Harris. Plus a confidence in their playing the belies their youth, but what really made me sit up and take notice was just melodic many of the songs here are. I thought of Razorlight's self titled second album often as "Inside In" was playing the more tuneful songs, like "She Moves in Her Own Way" or "Naive."

Like most of the bands mentioned in this review, The Kooks have one other link. They are quintessentially British sounding (you can throw comparisons to The Kinks and Oasis in here if you prefer). They're a bit rough at the edges still (the title "Jackie Big Tits" should have been dropped) a problem that the next album, "Konk," remedies in a big way, yet too melodic to share the same pedestal as the Monkeys. If that kind of brash Britishness appeals you, then you're going to enjoy The Kooks' debut.

Current Mood: chipper
Current Location: Philadelphia
Current Music: "Naive" The Kooks

Is This Really It?
4 Out Of 5 Stars

The Strokes are one of those bands that have been held up as 'saviors' for so long that it's hard to believe that their total output for a decade is a mere four albums. "Angles" is the first time that they've - in my opinion - lived up to the hype of the first album. It doesn't sound like a knock-off (the reason my review of "Room on Fire" was two stars), and sounds more committed than "First Impressions" did. They've re-embraced pop structure, and Julian Casablancas' singing is at a new peak. Even the first single, "Under Cover of Darkness" breezed by with an easy charm.

Maybe it was the near five year break that motivated them, but "Angles" has that cool-band buzziness back. The punk urgency of "You're So Right" recaptures the CBGB rawness of the earlier days, while the new-wave "Two Kinds of Happiness" and "Games" take their cues from the chittering work The Cars were so perfect at. At the same time, the experimentation that made "First Impressions" sound listless is tightened up for "Gratisfaction" (best Strokes song ever?) and the moody, "Call Me Back." So maybe "First Impressions of Earth" wasn't as much a backslide as I first thought.

Overall, "Angles" is what "Is This It" originally promised from The Strokes. They had, at the beginning both attitude and ambition to burn. Casablancasa was as blatant an anti-star as the year had turned out, with all the attractiveness that would imply. The snarling twin guitars and snapping rhythm section are as tight now as they were then, and "Angles" is the sound of a band, while not making a masterpiece, still on solid footing.