Tag Archives: the strokes

#1336: The Strokes – Tap Out

Leave a reply

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.

#1220: The Strokes – Slow Animals

Leave a reply

And just like that, The Strokes’ Comedown Machine will have been out for 12 years this coming March. But I was there to report when it was streaming on Pitchfork before it was officially released (if you scroll a bit further down after clicking the link). The album gets unfairly shafted because the band didn’t do any kind of promotion for it. Everyone thought it was a fast-release thing so they could get out of their record contract with their label at the time. But they still released The New Abnormal with RCA anyway, sort of. When it comes to Comedown Machine, I wouldn’t say it’s my favourite Strokes album. But it definitely has a few of what I think are the best songs ever on there. That makes me appreciate it a whole lot more. Have always thought it was much better than Angles, personally.

‘Slow Animals’ is the seventh song on the album and another that sees Julian Casablancas continuing to explore other ranges of his voice, something that happens a lot throughout Comedown. With ‘Animals’ he adopts a very soft delivery, it’s almost like a whisper, guarded by larger presence of Nick Valensi and Albert Hammond Jrs’ guitars on their respective left and right hand sides of the sound space. I’m a person who’s usually looking more for the feel of the music rather than the words that are sung, and there’s always been a smooth, night-time drive atmosphere to the track that I’ve always appreciated about it. Even looking at the lyrics now, although they sound so pleasant the way Casablancas sings them, they’re quite abstract though still very evocative. They’re an observation on romantic and familial relationships. Whether there’s anything deeper there, I couldn’t tell you.

I don’t know if what I’m about to say was a factor in why Comedown… was criticised in those earlier times, but Julian Casablancas’s vocals always seemed strangely recorded to me. On a lot of songs, it sounds like there was one microphone to capture the reverb with the other placed directly in front of him, with the former being the most prominent of the two in the mix. It’s more obvious on a couple other numbers, but it does apply here too. The softer vocal that starts it off is almost ghostly and not directly in the centre. Then in the pre-chorus, another vocal take with his lower register enters the frame which then switches up for the busier choruses. But that initial reverby vocal is the one that gets the more attention. It’s a weird one to describe. Maybe in the next Comedown Machine song I write about on here, it’ll make more sense.

#1118: The Strokes – Reptilia

Leave a reply

What can you say about The Strokes’ ‘Reptilia’? I don’t think it’s unfair to say it’s one of indie rock’s most iconic songs. It’s definitely one of the band’s most popular efforts, there’s no doubt in that. You got the Albert Hammond Jr’s guitar riff during the intro. You’ve got Nick Valensi’s guitar break before the choruses. You got Nikolai Fraiture slamming that B note on the bass guitar alongside Fab Moretti’s steady drum pattern. You got Hammond Jr. doing his own solo during the chorus before Valensi carries out his guitar solo during the instrumental break. And then there’s Julian Casablancas, croony as ever on the vocals with a great melody, before going all shouty at various points. It’s one that gets the crowd cheering at every live gig the band’ll do. It’s one of my personal favourite Strokes tracks too, and one of the reasons why I always go to Room on Fire when I’m looking for a Strokes album to listen through.

The track’s one that feels like it’s always been there as long as I’ve existed. But I want to say that I can remember hearing the song for the first time too. Part of the instrumental was used on a football programme that was showing on Sky One. A programme that I couldn’t even try and think of what the title was. This was a long, long time ago. It would have been around 2003, so Room on Fire would have been out for maybe only a few months at the time. I was also eight. A short, short snippet of the song was used. Then the show carried on, and that was that. I kind of forgot about the song. Not that I even knew the song in order to forget it. I didn’t even know where it came from or who it was by. But then I saw the music video for the track on MTV2 some time later, had the feeling that I’d heard this exact same music somewhere before, and the dots suddenly connected. The Strokes videos were always being shown on MTV2, so again, I couldn’t tell you when the first time I saw it was. I did probably think that ‘Reptilia’ was a strange name for the song, though.

Speaking of the music video, it’s just so good, isn’t it? One of my favourites. One of those where if it had any other style or director or just wasn’t filmed in the same way it was, the whole music/visual aspect would be thrown off. It just matches the music perfectly. You’ll see that I haven’t once noted any thoughts on the meaning of the song. That’s because, and I’ve only realised this myself, I don’t think I’ve ever wondered what this song was about. There was once a time on Wikipedia where the track was categorised as one that was ‘about suicide’. That was a while ago too, I’m not sure that page exists on there anymore. If I did think about what the meaning was, it wouldn’t be that. Everything in the song sounds fantastic, though. Was surprised to find, after doing the research on Strokes when figuring them out initially, that this track was released as the second single from Room on Fire, with ’12:51′ being the first. Between those two, I know ‘Reptilia’ would make me more excited for a new album that was on the horizon. Seems that Fab Moretti felt the same way. Shout out to ’12:51′ though, that song’s smooth.

#1104: The Strokes – Red Light

Leave a reply

Just the other day I was writing about another song from this album. Ah, well. These sorts of things are expected to happen on this blog. I pretty much explained my thoughts on The Strokes’ First Impressions of Earth in the ‘Razorblade’ post, so it leaves me with little to go with when it comes to writing this first paragraph. From what I know as a faraway Strokes fan, I believe the making of this album and the touring schedule for it was a time of growing tension between the band members – the outcome being that First Impressions would be the band’s “most recent” effort for a few years as they embarked on a hiatus. All of the members went on their solo tips. And those years really had us wondering. Would the Strokes ever get back together? Well, we all know they did when Angles came around in 2011. They almost had us, though.

‘Red Light’ is the last song on First Impressions…, bringing the band’s longest album to a close with a track about, I think, falling in love (true love, at that) and all the feelings that come along with it. Obviously when you hear the phrase ‘red light’, you can either think of the traffic signal or the red-light district. I’m sure that its usage was very much tongue-in-cheek in part by Casablancas. But I’m also sure that generally the track is very sincere in its tone. Casablancas had recently got married in the beginning of 2005, and lines like “Two could be complete without the rest of the world” and the sorta cheesy “All the girls could never make me love them the way I love you” could only reflect what he could have been feeling at the time. As well as that, ‘Red Light’ seems to also be a bit of a commentary on how life is sort of boring because everything that’s had to be invented now exists and the world seems to revolve in an eternal state of indifference. His own tired attitude to being the frontman of a rock band who’s constantly gaped at seems to take its toll too. Some contrasting frames of mind going on in this tune for sure.

All this being said, I do find myself singing along to the guitar lines during the verses, or that climbing/descending bassline that occurs at points throughout the track, rather than the words themselves. They’re all written by Casablancas. How he thinks all of these things up, I don’t know. But those melodies in those are just as infectious as that of the lead vocal line. Always like a track with a good finger-clicking, swinging tempo too. The first time I ever heard ‘Red Light’ was back in 2005 when MTV2 was showing a performance of The Strokes live in the channel’s studios, an exclusive in the lead up to the release of First Impressions…. They played ‘Red Light’, and the kid who was 1 years old (this is me) thought there was something cool about the song at the time. It’s never lost its touch. But that’s just how The Strokes roll, isn’t it? Always liked how it all ends on a dull thud rather than this big finish too. So understated but somehow also very emphatic.

#1094: The Strokes – Razorblade

1 Reply

Been a while since I wrote about a song from The Strokes’ First Impressions of Earth on here. Last time was 2019, goodness, that feels like a lifetime ago. Having listened to that album a few times over the years, I’ve come to the conclusion that the particular album has some of the band’s best songs of their catalogue on there. It also suffers from having the dullest 11/12 minutes on there out of all the records they’ve made. The stretch of ‘Killing Lies’, ‘Fear of Sleep’ and ’15 Minutes’ is, in my eyes, not so great. I can never remember how those songs go after hearing them. That’s not the case for ‘Razorblade’ though, no, no. That’s one of for the best songs category.

Now, I remember the release of First Impressions pretty well. I was in my final year of primary school, 10 going on 11. The video for ‘Juicebox’ appeared on the TV and was shown very regularly during the day despite how racy it got. I dug the track. Now, not so much, but that’s going in another direction. My sister was going through a Strokes phase herself, and a school friend of hers lent her a First Impressions CD, which she immediately ripped onto Windows Media Player and returned to that friend not too long after. And even with that nice origin story, it took me years until I actually listened to ‘Razorblade’ in full and appreciated how good it was. Being that young an age, I don’t think I had the patience to sit through albums and mainly listened for the singles. It definitely could have been a single, though. If I was 17 years older, in the band and had my way, I would have made an argument for it.

The song’s this somewhat upbeat sounding song about emotional manipulation. I say upbeat because I hear that opening guitar riff by Nick Valensi in the left channel, those fiddly guitar lines he does during the verses, or Albert Hammond Jr’s solid rhythm guitar work all throughout, and I can’t help but think there’s something summery about the sound of it all. Like all this relationship turbulence is happening at the beach. Julian Casablancas is not singing about an actual razorblade here. The razorblade is a metaphor for love, as he states in the first line of the track, and he places this razorblade as the central component within this relationship of a couple who sound like they can’t stand each other, but, deep down, care for each deeply. Casablanca’s melody choices and delivery, that chorus reminds me of one of those old schoolchildren taunts from back in the day, make it sound like the whole affair’s pretty trivial and a bit silly. But love can be that way, I guess.