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
