The Strokes, Angles

The Strokes, Angles

Reviewed by: Christian Hagen

Five years later, and the lesson is turned back on us. The Strokes, once deified as the saviors of indie rock, refiners of the garage sound that has pervaded the last decade of young bands, champions of the lo-fi who took a shot at a new sound and were struck down by a fickle scene, have returned to prove that, for all our attempts to dictate the path of a generation of musicians with our blogs and our Twitter feeds, the rock press exists as a light on the art, not as the art itself, or even as an extension of it. After years in a self-inflicted exile,  the band won’t let anyone push them around, won’t let anyone tell them they have to sound one way or the other. It’s a landmark statement in indie rock, if only because the men delivering the message are themselves landmarks in the cultural history of indie, and thus are deserving of notice.

The Strokes have long been, in my eyes, the least deserving victims of the short attention span of the blogosphere. The critics were firmly behind the band through their first two albums, Is This It? and Room On Fire. Even detractors of the time could at most complain that these collections were too similar. Consistency became a sticking point for some, while the band’s use of distortion became one for others.

So The Strokes, perhaps misinterpreting this mix of praise and criticism, changed. Suddenly, consistency became an almost nostalgic wish of some critics; who were these New York hipsters to give us two albums of satisfying lounge punk and then try something different? First Impressions of Earth, the band’s 2006 commercial failure, became a subject of endless derision for some fans and critics. Big riffs and undefinable genres replaced the band’s comfortably upbeat post-punk style. And just as suddenly as they overtook the music world, their backs were broken, and the group split, some feared for good.

But while many vocal critics bemoaned First Impressions, I found myself, over time, compelled by, and drawn to, the album’s sometimes difficult brilliance. From the opening lines of “You Only Live Once,” it was the biggest sound the band could have possibly produced, spread over 14 utterly different, utterly powerful tracks. Not perfect by any means, First Impressions was still much greater than it was given credit for. How one album could contain the thrilling guitar work of “Heart in a Cage” and the loud-quiet-loud chugging of “Fear of Sleep” is beyond me, and it is further beyond me that more people didn’t recognize it for the revolutionary work that it was. Maybe the ideas were lost in the noise (or the lack of noise, in the case of singer Julian Casablancas’s un-distorted voice).

Five years later, the band is back. And this time, the message isn’t lost in the noise; the message is the noise.

Angles, the group’s fourth release, is a far more subversive album than first listens might reveal. Pay close attention, and you can find The Strokes constantly calling attention to the listener’s expectations and then dashing them. And what’s so extraordinary about the whole thing is that they’re actually saying something. Surprisingly, whether the music is pleasing to listen to is not the point at all. The entire record serves as a clever critique of the music scene of the past decade, as well as a critique of the image the industry has created for The Strokes since Is This It? changed everything for indie bands back in 2001. Every song unpacks its messages slowly, each listen revealing that in the midst of what at first appears a sonic menagerie of unrelated sounds, there exists cohesive, recurring images and ideas.

Listen closely.

Given the anticipation for a new Strokes album, five years of predictions and questions coalescing into two popular notions (they will either return to the old ways and succeed or continue to experiment and burn out), with the stakes so seemingly high for the band’s career, The Strokes have chosen to open their new album with “Machu Picchu,” and suddenly, an entirely new ballgame, and an entirely new Strokes, is introduced. When the feedback swells to open the track, the last thing anyone expects is the plinking-plonking guitar, vaguely reggae and vaguely disco; the resulting sound slaps the listener awake. Stranger still, the distinctly rocking chorus doesn’t act as a diametric opposition to the 80s dancefloor style of the verse (the latter reminiscent of the “Beverly Hills Cop” theme), but rather as an underline, as if saying, “Yes, you are hearing this right. And we’re just getting started.” The album’s first words perfectly summarize the concept at work in this song: “I’m putting your patience to the test.”

After such a shocking opening, it would seem that lead single “Under Cover of Darkness” would act as a palette cleanser for the second track, reassuring fearful listeners that the worst is over. After all, the song is almost prototypically Strokes-ian; jaunty opening, bouncy verse, seemingly aimless but melodic pre-chorus, splashy chorus, guitar solo, repeat. But even at their most seemingly predictable, the band takes quiet potshots at their own formula. The lyrics are clearly critical of the scene (“I’ve been all around this town/Everybody’s been singing the same song for ten years” and “I won’t just be a puppet on a string”). The guitar solo begins with confusion and almost atonal plucking, as though Nick Valensi is coyly saying, “Oh, is there supposed to be a guitar solo here? My bad. I guess you would know better than me, huh?”

Beyond that, the songs rarely attempt to recapture the old sound, instead opting for a trip around as many genres as they can touch. But even this experimentation reveals the band’s criticisms of their surroundings, and perhaps even more so. The band not only refuses to give the listener what they want, they seek to defy the very notion that fans can dictate the art a band creates. “You’re So Right,” warped and droning as it is, computerizes the fractious personality divisions within the group, aided by a quickened beatbox that’s often reduced to simple bass and snare. You can dance to this song, but it’s not meant to satisfy; it exists to make the listener uncomfortable, to confuse, and when the band does rock out, the release is brief and tense.

Similarly, “Metabolism” is a dark beast of a song, replete with heavy grandiosity and almost orchestral keyboard arrangements. Yet, significantly, it’s the one track on the album in which Julian Casablancas’s voice is buried in the distortion like that of the band’s early work. The whole production becomes down-troddenly mythic even as Casablancas’s voice is downplayed in the mix. The song, combined with the much more traditionally rock-oriented “Taken For a Fool,” calls into question the very root of fans’ enjoyment of The Strokes, and asks if our love for them is simply based on the production.

“Taken For a Fool,” begs this production question in the opposite way of “Metabolism.” While “Metabolism” features vocals very similar to the old days paired with music that is extremely divergent, “Fool” plays very much like a usual Strokes tune instrumentally, but Casablancas’ strained vocals could easily distract the listener from noticing. Taken together, these two songs answer each other perfectly, one rollicking and one morose, and their songwriting and production similarities seem like a litmus test for fans. Do you want a song that rocks like Is This It? but sounds like First Impressions of Earth, or a song that sounds heavier than anything on First Impressions produced like Is This It? The answer is left to the listener, but posing the question is bold enough. The Strokes are no longer taking their cues; rather they’re giving them out.

The rest of the tracks play mostly like a time machine, traveling a few decades past to reconstitute older sounds for their own purposes. But here again the band doesn’t simply pay tribute to older music and leave it as is; at each turn they twist the formulas of rock and bend the listener’s ear. In the flaunting of classic rock influences, and especially in the dismantling of them, the band is paradoxically pushing the scene forward by going back to the basics, experimenting while playing it safe. The best example of this is “Two Kinds of Happiness,” which begins with a simplistic guitar strum very evocative of The Cars. It plays along with the 80s pop-rock image, down to the blanket on the production, until the chorus shatters the illusion of simplicity with a bombast of drums and guitar. Clearly, the band is not here to play simple pop songs; they’re after something bigger.

Arguably the album’s most entertaining track is “Gratisfaction,” a classic-rock anthem built around thudding drums and gang vocals that bring to mind the likes of Queen. Fraiture’s guitar even seems to be set on a Brian May-style overdrive. Punchy, pretty, fun, and damn catchy, it’s sure to be a favorite of old Strokes fans, even though it differs wildly from the band’s once laid-back collective persona. But this is also problematic: On the one track on the album which is the least combative to the old fanbase, the band fundamentally changes their identity. Isn’t this what people complained about back in 2006? Do we want the old Strokes sound or something better?

The album closes with the most clear and thorough debasing of the concepts the band is trying to critique, including the industry at large, as well as the image of The Strokes as seen by that industry. If the listener wasn’t convinced earlier that The Strokes are saying something biting on this album, “Life Is Simple in the Moonlight” could hardly be more blatant. Musically, the keys and guitars shimmer like the night’s sky, and on the surface it’s pleasant and rolling. But the lyrics don’t gel with this tranquility, self-deprecating at moments but much more frequently critical of the band’s peers, and of the music scene in general. “Animals on TV singing/about something that they once felt./There is no one I disapprove of more/or root for more than myself,” Casablancas sings, and in these verses he has never sounded more disaffected. But he’s proud of it, his ire rising only long enough to interrupt himself, screaming the album’s final, stirring rallying cry: “Don’t try to stop us/Get out of the way!”

Angles is an appropriate title for this album, not just because of the varying ideas within the band of how to construct a pop song (evidenced by five years of mostly differing side projects), but also because it attacks from all sides. The album is one ideologically-soaked strike against the naysayers who derided the band and denied them the opportunity to change, who told them they couldn’t grow up and shift their ideas. They take the scene to task in form and in content, destroying what’s past and pointing forward. It’s a landmark, perhaps the first (or at least the most visible) occurrence of a well-known indie band retaliating against the scene, standing up and saying, “Thanks, but we’ll do it our way.” The quality or entertainment value of the songs is irrelevant to the message.

And the message is clear: From here on out, no one can tell The Strokes what to do.