The modern age is a peculiar era for the music business. Music cliques and clans are less evident for a start. Gone are the days where mods and rockers – or even emo’s and scene kids – battled it out through icy stares outside record shops and fast food joints. These days, everyone’s just not bothered. House kids sit at home on their laptops listening to the latest Maya Jane Coles track whilst hipsters scream and shout about Record Store Day and Vice articles and the fact that the man is keeping them down. It’s all utterly predictable. In 2001, music was in a similar state. It was stagnant. Then five New Yorkers came along, ripped the industry a new one with the best debut album since Oasis’ eight years previously and made everyone wear skinny jeans and Converse for a decade.
In hindsight, that was a blessing and a curse for The Strokes. With Is This It, the band created a masterpiece so immediate and pulsating that it spawned a million and one imitators (from Pete’n’Carl to Preston to Palma Violets) and a burden with the realization that nothing could match it. The Strokes, it is fair to say, were doomed from the start. That’s not to say they haven’t given it a fairly decent crack. 2003 follow-up Room on Fire built on their debut and honed their now legendary sound into a more polished and radio-friendly affair. First Impressions of Earth had three startlingly good moments (‘Juicebox’, ‘Ize of the World’ and ‘Razorblade’) whilst Angles crippled under inter-band tensions. Is This It remains the albatross around their neck, so what does their latest effort Comedown Machine have to say for itself?
Thankfully, the record has a lot more to say than the band members themselves. There has been no promotion and no interviews from the band as a whole and we had to rely on Albert’s dad to give us an update a few months ago. Whilst predecessor Angles was fragmented and incohesive, Comedown Machine seems a record which was created to prove something. Opening track ‘Tap Out’ is a piece of infectious elastic funk which whizzes by at break-neck speed. It’s the most fun that The Strokes appear to have had since over a decade ago. ‘All the Time’ and ’50/50′ are Is This It throwbacks which are enjoyably nostalgic. That said, it’s a testament to the quality of Comedown Machine that these tracks are among the weakest on the record (one reviewer correctly suggested it is almost like trying to squeeze into the jeans which fit so right back in 2001).
‘One Way Trigger’ is the biggest red herring on the record. It nods to nu-wave and A-ha but deep down it sounds like a forgotten Julian solo track from 2009. It bursts along with synthesizers and slick production. It’s wildly different from any Strokes song past or present with a Casablancas falsetto rather than the rigid singing-through-a-megaphone technique he has used so often in the past. The unsung hero here is Fab Moretti, though. His continuous drumming energy breathes life into the record for the most part, elevating the pedestrian to note worthy.
’80s Comedown Machine’ sounds like a throwaway filler track from Casablancas’ solo album Phrazes for the Young. The track is immediately eclipsed by ‘Slow Animals’. Casablancas’ octave is brave (sample lyric: “you don’t have to be so down, everyone can hear you in this whole damn crowd”), whilst the interplay between Nick Valensi and Albert Hammond Jr is breath-taking. Their guitars and interwoven to create a jumpy guitar hook which is infectious and, again, sounds unlike anything The Strokes have done before.
“I’ll take my chances on my own” Casablancas laments on ‘Chances’, a contemplative breakup song, but we know that isn’t true. For the first time in years, the band are having fun. The majority of the record is an amalgamation of Is This It and Phrazes for the Young with brave vocal techniques and promise. That’s not to say it’s all good, though. Album closer ‘Call It Fate, Call It Karma’ is awkward with a spaghetti western-esque instrumental climax, whilst ‘Welcome To Japan’ is full of weirdness and clunky chord changes.
As you leave Comedown Machine, you get a sense of what the title really means. With the sleeve featuring RCA – the Strokes’ record label and long-time partners – you realise that this may just be the end. With the contract of five albums finally run out, you start to wonder why Comedown Machine has been created so quickly after Angles. Is it merely churned out to bookmark the end so the band members can disappear into their various paths? Who knows. The Strokes have always taken stock in surprising us. Comedown Machine isn’t a bad climax to a career. It may not be the record that Strokes fans need, and it certainly isn’t the album that critics want…but in the end: does it matter? Not really, because The Strokes are the reason that you got into music.
By James Daniel Rodger
Dance Yrself Clean
