Man, I wish someone in the Strokes comes to a realization one of these days that there are more songs on Comedown Machine that are worth playing in a live setting. They’ve done both ‘Call It Fate, Call It Karma’ and ‘Welcome to Japan’ so little times you could count them on one hand. At the time of writing this, they were most recently performed at the Chelsea in Las Vegas. ‘One Way Trigger’, they’ve done a few times too and also in that Vegas show. But there are others on that LP that I feel so many fans would tear a limb off to witness. For me, ‘Tap Out’ is a frontrunner in that category. Whenever you have a Strokes album, the first track on there usually goes down as one of the best on there. It’s just a thing that’s known. ‘Tap Out’ has strong competition with the likes of ‘Is This It’, ‘Machu Picchu’, ‘The Adults Are Talking’, and the others which will get their posts on here so I’ve chosen not to link them. But ‘Tap Out’ holds its ground. In fact, I might even say it’s one of my favourite Strokes songs, period.

I remember how unceremoniously Comedown Machine was treated by all parties when it came around in 2013. The band, taking a media blackout stance, didn’t promote it in any way. A music video for single ‘All the Time’ was made, which has since been made unavailable on YouTube. Goes to show how they feel about that. Its cover art was giving off the impression to some that the package was more a kiss-off to the label they were on than a fully-focused project. To quite a few, actually. And critics were pretty dismissive of it too. Pitchfork had a streaming platform that let listeners hear the album a week before its official release. That platform is now gone. ‘Tap Out’ was the first thing I heard. And it seemed so strange. Here was this new Strokes album that was getting no hype at all, but here was its first track that was entrancing, groovy and had all the markings off a great Strokes song. It was different, but in a good way, and was a mark that this new album wasn’t going to be the Is This It/Room on Fire throwback that I recall people desperately wanted at the time.

To me, ‘Tap Out’ feels like Julian Casablancas reflecting on the overwhelming hype the band received at the turn of the 21st century when they were deemed the saviours of rock and roll by many a publication, a hype that’s there to a lesser extent today but still lingers, and detailing a feeling that this whole Strokes thing might have resulted in something a little more than he bargained for. Particularly being the subject to many a question from an interviewer that he can’t muster the energy to provide an answer to. But despite the annoyed sentiment that I perceive, like I said earlier, the song is a groove. Classic guitar interplay between Nick Valensi and Albert Hammond, Jr. occurs throughout. The track introduces the vocal technique of Casablancas singing in his normal voice, with a falsetto overdub over the top, which is used frequently throughout the LP. And over the years, I’ve grown a particular appreciation for what I think is the organ on the left side that comes in during the choruses. Adds a divine, floaty dimension to the song while the other bandmembers continue on with the tight rhythm. This song is tight. Tight, tight, tight. Here’s where I would paste a video of a band performing the subject song live, but for reasons I’ve stated, I can’t. But one day. One day.