930 Forums
=> GENERAL DISCUSSION => Topic started by: you be betty on January 03, 2006, 04:51:00 pm
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...Does anyone have it yet?
After hearing "Juicebox," I can't say whether I am looking forward to this album or not...
(Though I was able to find "You Only Live Once," which is alright...could be the only good song on the album, too.)
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I've heard several songs on KEXP and thought they all sucked...and I actually thought what I heard off of album #2 was pretty good.
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me too! what bothers me about all of this, is that The Strokes got a lot of shit for album deux sounding exactly like album un. so, after hearing Juicebox and reading other reviews of the album; it seems to me like they are just trying extra hard to change their sound.
whatever they were doing before was working, though; and I think they'd have to be pretty moronic to change their entire sound just to please a bunch of critics...
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Originally posted by you be betty:
whatever they were doing before was working, though; and I think they'd have to be pretty moronic to change their entire sound just to please a bunch of critics...
"The Strokes . . . wildly ratchet up their sound, trying new things, getting weirder, but remaining true to the core of their sound." (http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/record-reviews/s/strokes/first-impressions-of-earth.shtml)
I'll be getting it right after work. I like the leaked tracks I've heard especially "You Only Live Once" and "On The Other Side". Though they definitely don't sound as good as previous material, we'll see how I feel after repeated listens...
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I'll be getting it after work. Big fan of the first two LPs. Hopefully it's not too different since I liked what they were doing already.
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i love me some strokes. those first two albums are 22-for-22 when it comes to great little garage pop songs. well, as long as you use the original version of the first album with "new york city cops" and not the one with that other song.
but i've tried and tried over the past month or so to get into the new one and it's just not happening. "you only live once" is pretty great, but that's the only one that would have been even top 7 or 8 on the other two. there's one song, "ask me anything," that sounds EXACTLY like a magnetic fields song, steals a vocal melody and all that, so that's kind of entertaining. but other than that, none of them really make an impression. it's just dull. and too many songs.
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So is anyone on here who is over 30 into the Strokes?
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Originally posted by Charlie Nakatestes, Japanese Golfer:
So is anyone on here who is over 30 into the Strokes?
I hear tell that he's (http://tinyurl.com/d4rsr) really into them
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Well... I like the prog-rock title.
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Good article/interview with Julian.
http://www.calendarlive.com/music/cl-ca-strokes1jan01,0,2664962.story?coll=la-homepage-calendar-widget&track=widget (http://www.calendarlive.com/music/cl-ca-strokes1jan01,0,2664962.story?coll=la-homepage-calendar-widget&track=widget)
A little excerpt:
So now with the third album â?? historically a make-or-break career mark â?? it's hard not to ask: Are the Strokes going to step up and be a world-class band or not?
"I don't know," Casablancas, 27, says by cellphone. "I don't really think about it. In our minds, we feel like the record is good and we can sustain a career."
But that answer, he knows, isn't good enough for many he encounters, particularly in the press and the music business, which seem to hunger for a catchy (and perhaps simplistic) narrative with which to package the band.
"They want you to think about it â?? 'Are you saving rock 'n' roll?' " he says. "Leave me alone. We're making music."
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Recordings
The Strokes' Mostly Positive 'First Impressions of Earth'
By Allison Stewart
Special to The Washington Post
Wednesday, January 4, 2006; Page C01
It's the oldest story in rock-and-roll. A pitilessly hyped, moderately innovative band becomes moderately successful, only to watch other, more agreeable bands get famous doing lesser versions of the same thing.
The Strokes released an attention-getting debut, "Is This It," in 2001, followed it with a play-it-safe second album, "Room on Fire," that seemed to bore even them, and then ceded their hard-fought territory to bands like Bloc Party and -- this must've hurt -- the Killers.
The Strokes' third disc arrives minus much of the scrutiny that greeted their first two, though if the band has been liberated by the comparative lack of attention, it gives no sign of it on the patchy but compelling "First Impressions of Earth."
The title can't be an accident: The Strokes, and lead singer Julian Casablancas in particular, have always seemed like really stylish aliens sent here to file reports for their home planet. Unlike their polar opposites, the hearts-on-their-sleeves Coldplay, the Strokes are all sense and no sensibility. At this point, their aloofness is probably more a vocation than a pose, but because "Earth" finds the Strokes struggling to overcome their characteristic chilliness, it's not as bad as it could have been, or as good as it might have been if they'd tried a little harder. Whether or not you eventually warm to it (and repeat listenings definitely help), it's hard not to appreciate the effort.
"Earth" is the least inert Strokes disc ever. It's bigger, longer, more everything: The rock songs are harder, the glam-disco numbers are peppier, songs shift time -- and genres -- unexpectedly, there are brief flirtations with funk and reggae, and Casablancas's vocals, freed of the filigrees and production tricks that buried them for so long, can sound uncannily like recent vintage Bono.
"Earth" outlines the Strokes' adventures as they drink a lot, romp joylessly through New York's nightlife, drink some more and examine their relationships, peers and bodily functions with the impressive thoroughness and lack of affect usually found in Jay McInerney novels.
It yields a handful of great songs: The frenetic first single, "Juicebox," thrums with an un-Strokes-like intensity, while the quasi-ballad "Razorblade" neatly appropriates the melody from Barry Manilow's "Mandy." But at almost an hour, "Earth" feels a little long. For every spot-on song like the rattling "Heart in a Cage," there are two lazier ones, with unfocused choruses that never pay off. "We could drag it out/But that's for other bands to do," Casablancas sings in "Ask Me Anything." "I've got nothing to say/I've got nothing to say."
Somewhere around the 40-minute mark, you'll begin to see what he means, but anyone who sticks around will find that one of the disc's most affecting tracks comes toward the end: "15 Minutes" is, predictably, about the Strokes themselves. It's a withering parable about stardom and its consequences, one of the few songs here that aren't too cool to mean something. "First time around/Second took so long/Third time's a charm," sings Casablancas, and for the most part, he's right.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/03/AR2006010301895.html (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/03/AR2006010301895.html)
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Who cares what the music is like....Julian is soooooo dreamy! :roll:
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Their first album was great, and fresh-sounding, but it was the kind of thing that if you just do over and over again, it just gets boring. So they basically had no choice but to change.
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Does your line of thinking regarding Strokes albums apply toward women as well?
Why the constant need for change?
Originally posted by Doctor Mood:
Their first album was great, and fresh-sounding, but it was the kind of thing that if you just do over and over again, it just gets boring. So they basically had no choice but to change.
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Originally posted by Charlie Nakatestes, Japanese Golfer:
Does your line of thinking regarding Strokes albums apply toward women as well?
Why the constant need for change?
Originally posted by Doctor Mood:
Their first album was great, and fresh-sounding, but it was the kind of thing that if you just do over and over again, it just gets boring. So they basically had no choice but to change.
[/b]
Why put out the same stuff over and over? You might as well just keep listening to the first album.
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If a band is of marginal talent, I would agree.
However, take someone with true talent like George Jones. I want George Jones singing classic country. I don't want him singing modern country, I don't want him singing alt-country, I don't want him singing rock or jazz, I don't want him singing into a megaphone, or with other special effects. It's his voice doing the classic country sound that I want. And why listen to just one classic country album by the Possum if there are 30 good ones? If he puts out a 31st that is good stuff, I'll want that one too.
But obviously, the Strokes are a flavor of the moment band rather than a musically historical figure ala George Jones. Can't wait for the Strokes polka album.
Originally posted by Doctor Mood:
Originally posted by Charlie Nakatestes, Japanese Golfer:
Does your line of thinking regarding Strokes albums apply toward women as well?
Why the constant need for change?
Originally posted by Doctor Mood:
Their first album was great, and fresh-sounding, but it was the kind of thing that if you just do over and over again, it just gets boring. So they basically had no choice but to change.
[/b]
Why put out the same stuff over and over? You might as well just keep listening to the first album. [/b]
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Originally posted by Charlie Nakatestes, Japanese Golfer:
But obviously, the Strokes are a flavor of the moment band
[/QB][/QUOTE]
Well, that's the other thing. They received acclaim with their first album because it sounded fresh. But that won't keep you going over a series of albums.
I take it you don't like the Strokes. But my point is simply that they needed to grow (another word for change). Even in an ossified genre like country, the really good musicians grow and change over time.
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Free stream of the new album if you sign up here:
http://www.jpnm.net/strokes_listeningparty/8_heathenangel_index.html (http://www.jpnm.net/strokes_listeningparty/8_heathenangel_index.html)
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first song is really good, and the others have the catchy strokes tune to it, like the reggae chords which is very similar to their room on fire sound....but do they really need that goofy backing guitar riff and every song? overall, i have to rate this record- cheeseball.
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I don't particularly like or dislike the Strokes.
Like You Be Betty, I do prefer for my favorite bands or artists to keep the same sound rather than trying to reinvent the wheel. If you're good at lyrics and you have a distinctively appealing voice and style, there's no reason to try to become something different. Thus, I'll take the latest Son Volt album over the latest Wilco album any day of the week. Each album has ten or more different songs on it than the previous album. That's difference enough for me.
Originally posted by Doctor Mood:
Originally posted by Charlie Nakatestes, Japanese Golfer:
But obviously, the Strokes are a flavor of the moment band
[/b]
Well, that's the other thing. They received acclaim with their first album because it sounded fresh. But that won't keep you going over a series of albums.
I take it you don't like the Strokes. But my point is simply that they needed to grow (another word for change). Even in an ossified genre like country, the really good musicians grow and change over time. [/QB][/QUOTE]
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Originally posted by BookerT:
there's one song, "ask me anything," that sounds EXACTLY like a magnetic fields song, steals a vocal melody and all that, so that's kind of entertaining.
i haven't heard the strokes album, but it seems like every stephen merritt tune has some kind of classic melody line, like they could all be long-lost twisted stephen foster songs or something, so it's not saying much to compare something to a magnetic fields melody ...