Why are there always people who decide that any band with a strong image is style over substance? Fucking Beatles with their suits and matching haircuts, those Pendleton sponsored fashion poseurs the Beach Boys can piss off too.
"Clear Skies" was written by Fab for a movie Drew Barrymore was doing, but I don't think it made the cut. It reinforces my theory, along with the Little Joy album, that Fab is secretly the second best songwriter in the band. And no Strokes non-album tracks list is complete without "Sagganuts".
Thanks man, I've been listening to it more often lately with the release of the new album and I'm really happy to hear other people like it too. I love the way "Ize of the World" cuts out before "I'll Try Anything Once" gently comes in to finish the album, where before I thought it was a very jarring moment during the general drag of the second half of the album.
I think the quality of Angles as a whole is disproportionate to the quality of the tracks individually. To me it sounds like a Greatest Of, but one that has been put in a weird order and only has 10 tracks, of which 2 are duds, but there's no way I'm skipping any of those other 8 if they come up on shuffle.
I LOVE that the Vulture list includes "I'll Try Anything Once". As I've suggested elsewhere on the 'Gum, I really think The Strokes missed a trick not putting it last on FIOE to complement "YOLO".
You have no idea the number of times I played the solo from "Alone, Together" when I first got an electric guitar and an Is This It tab book. Good times.
"Last Nite" may have been the big single but IMO it's actually one of the weaker tracks on Is This It? (granted, not exactly an insult). Frankly, any 10 tracks selected from all of ITI, the majority from RoF and a sizeable handful from the other three could be on this list and you'd be able to justify it or complain about it. Chill, put on Comedown Machine and enjoy a good piece of writing about a great band.
1. Under Control
2. 12:51
3. The Modern Age
4. Hard to Explain
5. Trying Your Luck
6. You Only Live Once
7. Taken for a Fool
8. Welcome to Japan
9. Someday
10. Slow Animals
Rest assured I will change my mind again in 5 minutes.
Steven Hyden wrote a great piece on Grantland about their career so far. Some opinions in there I don't agree with but it's a fantastic bit of writing and well worth a read.
http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/9096863/the-strokes-career-arc-it-their-new-album-comedown-machine
Well yeah, obviously "bad" is pretty subjective, but it's definitely one of his worst pre-Tonight albums, and to have it above The Next Day and Lodger (even Let's Dance) is pretty criminal IMO.
He makes pop music. Some people still can't seem to get past the petty pre-teen mindset that if something is packaged as pop then it can't possible be good or have any artistic merit.
12:51 and Under Control are actually my two favourite Strokes tracks, but back to front Is This It is pretty much a perfect album. Also NYC Cops > The Way It Is > When It Started.
Really? I think one of its main advantages over Angles is how much better it plays as an album. I feel it's quite similar to ROF in that it covers a lot of ground stylistically but retains a unifying sound and feel.
The tracklist is:
1. You Only Live Once
2. Hawaii
3. Razorblade
4. Heart in a Cage
5. Ask Me Anything
6. Electricityscape
7. Red Light
8. Juicebox
9. Evening Sun
10. Ize of the World
11. I'll Try Anything Once
Which means Vision of Division (which I don't mind, it's like a better version of Metabolism, but just missed the cut) as well as On the Other Side, Killing Lies, Fear of Sleep and 15 minutes(which I feel completely kill the momentum of the album) were cut.
FIOE is 52 minutes long, which isn't particularly huge but by The Strokes album. I created my own version of First Impressions that cut it down to 11 tracks and swapped in Hawaii and the demo of You Only Live Once (as an outro) and greatly prefer it to the original, which I think had sequencing problems as well as being too long.
I think this is their first album since Room On Fire without a single legitimately weak track on it, and I think 3rd place is much more of a compliment when you consider it's probably a lot closer to 2nd (ROF) than it is to 4th (Angles) and 5th (FIOE).
I'll try and get most of my current thoughts out here (spoiler alert: I really like it).
Loving the funky, syncopated guitar lines and shiny 80s new wave/disco feel of the album as a whole, mixed with just the right amount of "classic" Strokes sounds and more of an introspective bent than we're used to from these guys. I know lots of people are comparing it to Phrazes, but is anyone else getting an Albert Hammond Jr. solo material vibe from "80s Comedown Machine"? If I were to guess I'd definitely say he had a big hand in writing that one. "50/50" sounds to me like what half of FIOE (plus "Metabolism" and "You're So Right") should have sounded like.
In my opinions First Impressions sounded like the band running out of ideas, Angles was them searching for a new direction to take their music in after FIOE and Comedown Machine sees them having found that direction and setting off into it very confidently while keeping a firm grasp on what made them great in the first place.
Nice.
I love or like most of the tracks on Angles, but, yes, my main problem was that it never hangs together as a coherent album. It felt more like a singles compilation with 2 shitty tracks (which shouldn't, on the other hand, take away the fact that half of them could legitimately make a Strokes best of).
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