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Avg: 4.0 (794 ratings)
- Date Released: September 25, 2001
- Genre: Rock/Pop
- Style: Rock
- Label: RCA Records Label
- Copyright: (P) 2001 The Strokes
The 21st century's first masterpiece of blasé theatre
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We Say...
Forget about "Last Nite." The single that launched the Strokes is, to paraphrase NFL coach Dennis Green, what we thought it was: the riff from Tom Petty's "American Girl," an adolescent growl, too gutless to be big dumb rock, a song so dimensionally-challenged that it couldn't draw a square around a typical mid-'60s garage stomp. Is This It begins with a yawn — the resigned-sounding, sing-song title track hears frontman Julian Casablancas admitting, "I'm just way too tired" — and it turns out that boredom is the most authentic emotion on the Strokes' debut. (Tellingly, the album also contains songs titled "Soma" and "Take It Or Leave It.")
It also turns out that boredom is the catalyst for nearly all of the strange and wonderful things that have happened in the history of rock 'n' roll. Is This It was the 21st century's first masterpiece of blasé theatre, a conscious changing of the style guard by five privileged Manhattan prep-school types. Much has been written about the upper-crustiness of the band members, but the Strokes' real advantage was their cultural affluence: early teenage years spent listening to Guided By Voices, the Velvet Underground and Television — bands most Gen Xers didn't discover until college.
Casablancas' vision arrived fully formed on Is This It, from the deliberately tinny guitar and drums to the unfashionably round bass tones and vocals that sound like they're coming through a megaphone in the apartment next door. It all sounds cheap, hammered-out (or just plain hammered) and more glorious for each implementation of its let's-get-small approach to recording. Each song chugs along with a peculiar brand of wizened youth, with Casablancas singing about regrets and lost loves with a world-weariness that's almost comically beyond his 23 years. While "Last Nite" is too slight to deserve its reputation as this debut's signature song, "Hard To Explain" is its real anthem. The ducking-and-weaving guitar melody perfectly carries Casablancas' maze of lyrics — part scribbled bar conversations, part confused meditation on whether he should stay or whether he should go. To be so young and so old at the same time. -
They Say...
Blessed and cursed with an enormous amount of hype from the British press, the Strokes prove to be one of the few groups deserving of their glowing reviews. Granted, their high-fashion appeal and faultless influences -- Television, the Stooges, and especially Lou Reed and the Velvets -- have "critics' darlings" written all over them. But like the similarly lauded Elastica and Supergrass before them, the Strokes don't rehash the sounds that inspire them -- they remake them in their own image. On the Modern Age EP, singles like Hard to Explain, and their full-length debut, Is This It, the N.Y.C. group presents a pop-inflected, second-generation take on late-'70s New York punk, complete with raw, world-weary vocals, spiky guitars, and an insistently chugging backbeat. However, their songs also reflected their own early-twenties lust for life; singer/songwriter/guitarist Julian Casablancas and the rest of the band mix swaggering self-assurance with barely concealed insecurity on "The Modern Age" and reveal something akin to earnestness on "Barely Legal" -- a phrase that could apply to the Strokes themselves -- in the song's soaring choruses. The group revamps "Lust for Life" on "New York City Cops" and combines their raw power and infectious melodies on "Hard to Explain," arguably the finest song they've written in their career. Nearly half of Is This It consists of their previously released material, but that's not really a disappointment since those songs are so strong. What makes their debut impressive, however, is that the new material more than holds its own with the tried-and-true songs. "Is This It" sets the joys of being young, jaded, and yearning to a wonderfully bouncy bassline; "Alone Together" and "Trying Your Luck" develop the group's brooding, coming-down side, while "Soma," "Someday," and "Take It or Leave It" capture the Strokes at their most sneeringly exuberant. Able to make the timeworn themes of sex, drugs, and rock & roll and the basic guitars-drum-bass lineup seem new and vital again, the Strokes may or may not be completely arty and calculated, but that doesn't prevent Is This It from being an exciting, compulsively listenable debut when those are few and far between. [In light of the World Trade Center disaster, the track "New York City Cops" was pulled from the U.S. release].
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| 01. |  |
Is This It |
2:31 |
|
| 02. | |
The Modern Age |
3:28 |
|
| 03. | |
Soma |
2:34 |
|
| 04. | |
Barely Legal |
3:55 |
|
| 05. | |
Someday |
3:04 |
|
| 06. | |
Alone, Together |
3:09 |
|
| 07. | |
Last Nite |
3:13 |
|
| 08. | |
Hard To Explain |
3:44 |
|
| 09. | |
When It Started |
2:55 |
|
| 10. | |
Trying Your Luck |
3:23 |
|
| 11. | |
Take It Or Leave It |
3:16 |
|
11 Total Tracks, 35:12 Total Length
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Credits
- Greg Calbi - Mastering // Gordon Raphael - Producer // Steve Ralbovsky - A&R // The Strokes - Main Performer // Fabrizio Moretti - Drums // Nikolai Fraiture - Bass // Julian Casablancas - Vocals // Nick Valensi - Guitar
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