10- Radiohead "In Rainbows"
09- The Streets "Original Pirate Material"
08- Interpol "Turn on the Bright Lights"
07- The Arcade Fire "Funeral"
06- PJ Harvey "Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea"
05- Yeah Yeah Yeahs "Fever to Tell"
04- Arctic Monkeys "Whatever people say I am, that's what I'm not"
03- Primal Scream "Xtrmntr"
02- The Libertines "Up the Bracket"
01- The Strokes "Is this it?"
The only album I would say is deserving of a top ten spot would be- Primal Scream's "Xtrmntr"
But, I will defend The Strokes' "Is this it?" for the sake of journalistic boredom, and cabin-fever flu-blogging. It seems I tend to read NME whenever I'm home with the flu.
"Is this it?" had a unique sound for something you'd hear on top 40 radio and The Strokes had a peculiar look for a 'change of the millennium' Rock and Roll band. I'll start with the latter of the two- The Look. This was around 2000/2001, when Radiohead was playing with vintage machinery as instruments, and Grunge AND Brit-Pop were pretty much, dead. They were young fashion dudes, caught between the 70's and the 80's image. Half the band dressed like Blondie, and the other half like The Stooges. It was a call to nostalgia during a time when their predecessors were moving toward the future. Whether The Strokes were industry made ala The Monkees, is unimportant to the fact that they stood for old-fashioned Rock and Roll. They weren't so much about the music (I liked it), as they were trying to save a dying genre. Many fell for the schtick- that revived Garage-Rock personae, and many rebelled against them, disproving their credibility for being the band who had been chosen to save Rock and Roll. Did they? Probably not.. which leads me to the music...
"Is this it?" was one hell of a marketing trick played on us, the record-heads. This was a time when "OK Computer" was the blueprint for 'the album'. "OK Computer" was long, overproduced (in a good way!), and conceptual to some confusing degree. The Strokes' debut was incredibly short, about a half-hour mix of quick 2-3 minute jingles, totally underproduced along the lines of their touring comrades- Guided By Voices, and lyrically simplistic as only a bunch of teenagers could write. They were the antitheses of Radiohead, so much that I remember rumors about them not playing their own instruments, or writing their own guitar parts. (Sound familiar? Was Don Kirschner in New York around this time??) Rolling Stone even had a spread about them meeting at a private school in Europe, disproving them to be an actual New York band. I was playing in my own band around this time, and no one I knew had seen or heard of them around the city personally. The Strokes had every element needed to rival the electronic revolution. Most notably, was Julian Casablancas' vocal tone. To this day, no one knows what the hell it is! Is it an effect, or is that his natural voice? No one knows! It's the sound of a peaked-out analog cassette recorder, but the weird thing is, he pulls it off live. Obviously, you'd assume he's singing through an effect pedal, but there's something mysterious about it, that when you do see him live, or hear the band in different settings, you undoubtedly believe that IS his natural voice. So let's put aside the chance that a young kid can sing like an old blues man, and move onto the rest of the group. The drummer- Fabrizio. This was a 70's Rock trick if I ever saw one. The band always put Julian in the back of all photo shoots, and placed the pretty boy drummer who barely kept time in the front. I can't tell you how many people used to say- "The singer is the dude with the afro dating Drew Barrymore." The guy barely had any talent, a novice-level drummer with a lot of personality apparently. This was revolutionary for the time, and maybe the first mega-famous band to do this. Previous bands 'Pete Bested' their crap drummers on the way to fame. This was an obvious nod to The Velvet Underground. What other iconic Rock groups had incompetent time-keepers at the height of their career? I thought it was pretty cool they didn't fire him, but what happened was a disaster of apocalyptic Indie-Rock proportions. They opened the doors to half-talented and in some cases, no-talent Indie bands to achieve radio popularity, and on top of that, made it 'cool' to suck at your instrument. I never liked that part of The Strokes' hype machine, but I see why and how it works.
The rest of the band were carbon copied Classic-Rock figures, and that reminds me of a Spin magazine quote posing the musical question- "Are The Strokes the best band in the world, or another auto-Oasis?" The guitarists never overplayed a single note, never changed up the riffs live, and I'm not sure they changed their costumes, I mean.. outfits for years. Other bands such as Interpol would make caricatures of themselves in the same way for the sake of identification purposes. All in all, it fit their tiny music trend that would quickly pigeon-hole The Strokes, leading to mediocre side-dish solo records, and the inescapable break-up of the band after a mere three ridiculously fleeting short albums.
So getting back to the songs... yeh, they were super catchy to the point of being annoying, and lyrically current, all about cocaine-use or coming of age themes. Nevertheless, people related to it, the band sold millions, and The Strokes were suddenly opening for The Rolling Stones overnight. Magazines backlashed the band with connections to Julian's father, who owns Casablanca Records, and publicizing Albert Hammond's direct nepotism to his father, a successful songwriter in the 70's. They were loved, then quickly attacked, being discredited as a mockery of the Indie Rockers who were consistently touring and working their asses off for a mili-minute of success The Strokes had gotten in less than a year.
So what did they do musically?
They might've been the first Lo-Fi rockers to hit number one all around the world. Even if it was part of the scam to flipside the slickness of Oasis and Radiohead. Their whole sound is anti-success, meaning they never took their songs as seriously as Thom Yorke's weepy-eyed poetic gloom, nor did they go the T-Rex route like Oasis, reaching for Arena Rock party anthems to be sung at a Jukebox near you, and they also intentionally avoided experimenting with soundscapes like the hoards of Coldplay bands trying to be the next David Bowie. Now that I think about it, for a band that got so much attention for three records, they never took themselves seriously at all. Maybe 'cause they weren't that great to begin with (that would be the popular theory amongst the people I know), or maybe that's what the music industry needed at the time, like a colonic enema for a constipated sound-shit-clot. Either way, The Strokes worked. They had their run, and according to NME, who used to be a wonderful music-mag, now a cartoon sunday morning children's show, they made the best album of the last ten years. If only Julian would grow some balls, and use his success to further some sort of mind-expanding reason why I have to read about them in every Top 100 list ('cause they're always somewhere in it, whether it's Pitchfork Media or Time Magazine), then the whole swindle wouldn't seem so controversial.
As I listen to Julian's new solo record while writing this, it grabs me. Whatever he had to achieve, or avoid accomplishing, the kid's got talent! The rich little fuck's got talent dammit, and that's more than I can say about these newer bands that are cashing in and torturing me with their radio singles while I stand in line for my morning coffee missing the soothing sounds of Pink Floyd I was so used to waking up to.
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