Back in 2001 with their debut album Is this it?, The Strokes rollercoasted through the Indie community: A bunch of rich young New York City snobs, all seemingly sons of Chuck Taylor himself, leaving shoegazers, post-punk cases and the like wondering if they were just trying too hard. Indie, the ever struggling thing without a definition, found itself a new mascot beyond the tiring ‘independent music’ conundrum and people could now conveniently describe it with a ‘like The Strokes’. Indeed Is this it? was the simplest old school rock ‘n’ roll album to have come out in ages, save their immediate recent predecessors, The White Stripes, that could possibly fetch the kind of adoration that it received from critics and listeners alike. Rock ‘n’ roll was easy again: Jangling guitars, smashing drums, droning grunge vocals narrating listless everyday New York stories and absolutely low-fi production techniques, a notable reverb-less achievement. And surprisingly, given the tools of their selection, they sounded unlike anything ever before.
Needless to say, The Strokes completely unloaded the Is this it? variety of musical ideas with their second effort- Room on fire. There were no complaints whatsoever. The Patron found it highly enjoyable and simultaneously began to worry with the itchy skeptic sitting next to him questioning Is this it?
Come 2006 and we had the very forgettable First impressions of earth. Inexplicably, The Strokes looked to stand on the shoulders of certain giants who were, in the first place, standing on the shoulders of The Strokes. The result was parkour flips and giants falling all over the place with The Strokes landing spectacularly flat on their faces while the Arctic Monkeys, Killers and Crystal Castles jumped off various cliffs themselves. It was a bad time for contemporaries to draw from one another since everyone was headed for disaster. The skeptic smirked.
Comedown Machine (2012)and Angles (2011) should’ve had their titles juxtaposed. Post a very timely self-imposed hibernation period, and Julian Casablancas having embarked on his solo debut – Phrazes for the young – Angles marked the believable new sound of The Strokes. This was the real comedown machine and even though they took to inspiration with clearer ideas, the album would not guarantee complete satisfaction with every follow-up to their initial impeccable record having been infected with at least a couple of sub-standard efforts. Still, traces of the Casablancas’s solo 70s pop-queen avatar seeped in delightfully with the angular guitar ways of Hammond, Fraiture and Valensi and the ever accommodating composer’s drumming of Fab.
Here, finally in Comedown Machine, they are very close to reaching complete closure with album quality and, hopefully, their next effort would take them outside of the machine and standing comfortably in new territories and people would amicably let go of their Is this it? kinship.
The album is roughly divided into the groovy, up tempo first act and the loungey, laidback second act. Casbalancas completely redeems lost points as one of the top composers of the day. Stop by ‘Instant crush’, his recent collaboration with Daft Punk and you’ll know just how fiercely composers mark their territories. The listener is confronted with at least three or four surprises per song while he waltzes in on blind spots in every track progressively with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of tricks up his sleeve making every brow-raising transition feel so easy and smooth.
You can, though, hear everybody you love on these tracks.
The album opens with the perky M.J.esque ‘Tap out’ infused with muted guitar riffs that are also spread throughout this record on other songs all apparently mimicking Daft Punks ‘Make love’ in guitar tone. Casablancas’s playlist for the year 2012 is laid out bare in most of the tracks and it’s almost as if they’re nonchalant in letting you know exactly what they’ve been listening to in the past two years.
The second track ,‘All the time’ is one (of the three?) for the vintage The Strokes listener with enough relieving ‘unmuted guitar’ and high bridged riffing and Fab eased into smashing cymbals to heart’s content. The engineer then cuts out the noise and that’s The Strokes back in the day for you.
‘One way trigger’, initially posted quietly on the band’s website as a single in January, is too blatantly Aha’s ‘Take on me’ (1972) as understood by The Strokes. This is nearly unforgivable until Casablancas puts your righteous self to rest with a frustratingly catchy chorus and a standout; surprisingly original falsetto. Nobody knew he could do that. In addition to reverb ridden, on the edge, vulnerable falsettos of the Thom Yorke / Jonsi Birgission factories and the Jack White / Justin Hawkins variety of zany, ridiculously hysteric falsettos, we have the newly inducted Casablancas’s brand of steely, disciplined, pop machine Altos.
Reminiscent of the ‘Phrases for the young’ record is an easy on the ears, ‘rave beat’en and unintelligibly worded ‘Welcome to Japan’ with poetry of extreme boredom and obliqueness featuring phrases like ‘What kind of an a*****e drives a lotus’, ‘Scuba Dancing’ and ‘He cheats on his clone’ on the same track. The Strokes have never gloated on the lyric front. They’ve never really cared so you can’t hold it against them.
The title track, the finale of Act 1 of Comedown Machine, is another of the treats for the Is this it? patron who just can’t get enough of ‘New York city cops’ while ‘50:50’ , ‘Slow animals’ and ‘Partners in crime’ are all tastefully done tracks though one doesn’t pick up a Strokes record for the same reason he picks up a Zero 7 record. Perhaps that is the intention here and the new sound of The Strokes may simply be beckoning you to accept their pop record over the garage rock days of their inception.
All in all there’s a sense of the overused ‘rave’ beat, the ‘make love’ guitar tone and the sheer cheek of deriving from various ‘inspirations’ but it’s all forgettable with these eleven delectable tracks of compositional virtuosity. Even though Comedown Machine displays much more conviction than its two predecessors, with its mysterious smooth synth pop, one is reminded of how much at ease they were during their early days and how much harder they have to work today to reaffirm your loyalty with every new idea.
