Once Again, The Strokes Make it Hard to Hate 'Em
By Kate Brokaw
A&F Associate

It seems almost painfully easy to hate The Strokes at this point, to bemoan the ubiquitous hype and their model girlfriends and the Rolling Stone-sanctioned position as the “New Kings of Rock.” And it seems just as tempting to make cleverly smirking “is this it?” comments about Room on Fire, their just-released sophomore effort. One can easily dismiss the album as a retread of a blueprint, another 33 minutes of the same kind of tunes that put the New York quartet at the forefront of the media’s obsession with rock revivalism a couple of years back. But although Room on Fire lacks some of that casual insouciance that characterized the band’s hugely popular debut, it is also an incredibly tightly constructed recording, deeply aware of every slightly-expanded musical influence throughout each swaggering tale of love and lust. Saviors of rock or not, it seems impossible to try to argue against any band that can produce an album of such well-done, insistently catchy songs.

But it is the ability to almost catch the listener off guard with those laid-back, modern pop gems that seems to be the most underrated skill of The Strokes, and one that is often hidden underneath all that too-cool-for-school surface quality. On first listen,“12:51” is an easily dismissible synth-pop track that’s ripped straight from The Cars, but its deliriously catchy melody and unfailing handclaps will dig itself right into your head. “Between Love & Hate” opens with a disco beat that quickly morphs into a flirtation with a dub-like sound, but it’s Julian Casablancas’ woozily insistent vocals that bring the song together, as he insists that “I never needed anybody/I never needed nobody.” Later on the album, the layered, soulful “Under Control” also uses Casablancas’ raspy croon to full advantage. There’s still an intentionally stripped-down garage rock production value on Room on Fire, but it’s less mono and slightly more fuzzed-out here, letting a killer hook smack you in the face just often enough.

But the true musical improvement on Room on Fire is in the star quality of lead guitarist Nick Valensi, who drives songs with strong and simple melodies that stay front-and-center even as they feed into Albert Hammond Jr’s grounding rhythm guitar. Those loud riffs give opener “What Ever Happened” a kind of decibel-raised rawness, while providing “Reptilia” with the same sort of taut, angular energy of Is This It closer “Take it or Leave It.” There’s no drastic departure in sound in any of these eleven tracks, but an awareness of what worked well on the first album leads to a more formal, increasingly conscious construction here, as each musical choice seems to have been adroitly planned out.

Lyrically, Room on Fire is still all late-night drinking and fizzling relationships, as Casablancas admits that “we were just two friends in lust/and baby, that don’t mean much,” in “Meet Me In the Bathroom,” and then realizing on “Out of Control” that “we were young, darling/We don’t have no control.” There’s a very in-the-moment feel to it all, but perspective appears in the form of both adolescent reminiscing, with Casablancas still “thinking about that high school dance/worrying about the finals” in “Between Love & Hate,” as well as in a pervasive and inarguable sense of the band’s own musical place.

Indeed, long before the critics started spouting off virtual laundry lists of (often seemingly arbitrary) influences, The Strokes were clearly aware of the retro quality of their sound. “Did they offend us and want it to sound new?/Top ten ideas for countdown shows/Whose culture is this and does anybody know?” Casablancas asks in the opening track of the album, as he admits that “I want to be forgotten/but I don’t want to be reminded.” Later, on “The End Has No End,” there’s a subtle aside about “keeping down the underground/oh no!” Rock hasn’t moved forward in a long time now, but The Strokes are confidently standing still. Rather than hiding any sense of appropriation, they’re making a case for the necessity of all those influences in their soundtrack of New York cool.

And although an awareness of this back-thinking musical referencing can certainly lead to a lessened sense of discovery in the music, it need not act as a preventive measure against enjoyment, just as plenty of contemporary fans of The Rapture and Radio 4 are no doubt deeply familiar with Gang of Four’s exceedingly reminiscent back catalog. Nothing about The Strokes has ever represented any kind of brilliant new era of rock, but what was most unfortunate about that original insane wave of hype was that it created an immediate backlash outside of the mainstream against a band that had simply made a great rock record, a cycle that seems to be repeating with the equally strong Room on Fire. There’s no question that music today needs some giant reinvention, some great new forward-thinking pioneers. But why deny a band that’s doing rock right?