year 2001
* Garage Rock Revival
* Indie Rock
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review: Blessed and cursed with an enormous amount of hype from the British press, the Strokes prove to be one of the few groups deserving of their glowing reviews. Granted, their high-fashion appeal and faultless influences -- Television, the Stooges, and especially Lou Reed and t
he Velvets -- have "critics' darlings" written all over them. But like the similarly lauded Elastica and Supergrass before them, the Strokes don't rehash the sounds that inspire them -- they remake them in their own image. On the
Modern Age EP, singles like
Hard to Explain, and their full-length debut,
Is This It, the N.Y.C. group presents a pop-inflected, second-generation take on late-'70s New York punk, complete with raw, world-weary vocals, spiky guitars, and an insistently chugging backbeat. However, their songs also reflected their own early-twenties lust for life; singer/songwriter/guitarist Julian Casablancas and the rest of the band mix swaggering self-assurance with barely concealed insecurity on "The Modern Age" and reveal something akin to earnestness on "Barely Legal" -- a phrase that could apply to the Strokes themselves -- in the song's soaring choruses. The group revamps "Lust for Life" on "New York City Cops" and combines their raw power and infectious melodies on "Hard to Explain," arguably the finest song they've written in their career.
w: Even though these girls have written easily over 100 songs with several producers. "The Secret Life of" is a quality but mixed result. They're main base "4ever" is a fantastic first single and "Everything I'm not" and "When it all falls apart" are good backups. However, after that it goes a little-pear shaped. Secret is a disaster, Speechless a saccahrine ballad and the cover "Mother Mother" very strange and awful. The rest are hit and miss with "Leave me alone" a strong goodbye but others being moody and emotional. Overall, not too bad but a lot of work to be done if these girls want to get noticed.
