You talk way too much:’ The great Strokes debate

THE PROS:

It’s exhausting, really, reading about The Strokes. The latest barrage of articles and cover stories in most music magazines have told me almost everything I wanted to know except how the new album sounds. Thansk to most music publications, I now know that on Room on Fire, the Strokes’ sophomore album, vocalist Julian Casablancas sings with a ‘cough syrupy croon,’ and that the record is loaded with a new-wave meets rock ‘n’ roll swagger.

Having actually gotten my hands on their second effort a bit early and given it time and consideration, I can assure you that the bottom line is this: if you’re a Strokes fan, you’re going to adore Room on Fire. Casablancas, along with guitarists Nick Valensi and Albert Hammond, Jr., bass player Nikolai Fraiture and drummer Fab Moretti are in top form.

The choruses are catchier, the guitar riffs are good enough to eat for breakfast and the songs themselves, somehow, are saturated with the sweaty streets, sadness and excitement of New York City on a warm fall night. If you’re not a Strokes fan, you will find it a simple task to dismiss everything I have just said. You will, as so many others have done, write the Strokes off as unoriginal and a pathetic choice for their current ‘saviors of rock’ status. I congratulate you on being able to make your own decisions! Freedom of choice is quite a beautiful thing.

But the Strokes aren’t the saviors of rock. They aren’t minimalist musicians or the second coming of the Velvet Underground. They may not even be talented songwriters, depending on your definition of what that happens to be.

This is what I think the Strokes are a rock ‘n’ roll band that had the ‘unfortunate’ destiny of gaining extreme notoriety at a point where the industry was producing an excessive amount of manufactured, bubble-gum pop groups that didn’t bother to write their own music. When England hit upon the Strokes and we eventually caught on Stateside, there was no turning back. The press was starving for something to love or hate or love to hate. They found that with the Strokes’ debut, Is This It. The band was alternately panned and glorified by almost every reviewer out there, who just had to weigh in on the Strokes debate. That’s when it got a bit boring.

The honest truth is that music journalists aren’t superhuman or unbiased they’re geeks who get a lot of free CDs in the mail. And if they decide to plant a big wet kiss on the Strokes’ new album, then they shall do so. Others prefer to exhaustively rip the band apart. Regardless, it amounts to the same rehashed diatribes and dim think pieces published in response to Is This It. Not surprisingly, Room On Fire is garnering the hype, anti-hype, attention and backlash all over again.

So there are two options. You can buy into the opinions of a bunch of educated music snobs, erect a shrine for the Strokes and salivate over pictures of Julian looking moody. Or, berate both the Strokes and the entire NYC music scene for being overrated and mediocre.

The alternative is to give the new material a listen purchase a copy, burn a friend’s, check out the first single, ’12:51,’ or perhaps catch them live in Lowell tomorrow night. Then, ignoring what you’ve been force-fed, make up your mind.

The best moments on Room on Fire, packed into just over 33 minutes, happen with the ornate musical details: the breakdown in ‘Reptilia,’ the handclaps in ’12:51,’ the segue from ‘Between Love and Hate’ and ‘Meet Me In The Bathroom.’ The album is worth it alone for Casablancas’ haughty ‘Don’t worry about it, honey,’ in the latter.

In ‘Under Control,’ Casablancas smugly intones, ‘I don’t want to change the world / I just want to watch it go by / … We were young, darling / We don’t have no control.’ You can practically hear him shrugging and smirking, daring you flip him off or join on in.

–Sharon Steel

THE CONS:

The Strokes are the most hyped band in the music biz, and everyone from Rolling Stone and The Boston Globe have trumpeted them as a fertile sign that all is not lost rock ‘ roll really can be saved!

Don’t be fooled. The emperor isn’t wearing any clothes, folks, and The Strokes are just about the phoniest band in popular music today. And that phoniness has not waned, as many naysayers hoped that it would, between the releases of their incredibly overrated 2001 debut, Is This It and their equally dopey sophomore effort, Room On Fire, released this week.

Without further ado then, a quick look at some of the more generally confusing assertions that critics and fans alike have made about this band.

Myth #1: The Strokes are talented songwriters.

No. It seems pointless to analyze individual songs, because the fact of the matter is that they are all the same. Simplistic, uninspired lyrics are set to the sophomoric, rhythmic energy of an annoying nursery rhyme. Lead singer Julian Casablancas continually apes Lou Reed’s deadpan delivery. No real songwriting variations exists, even between two albums. Range? Zipola. ‘Is this iiiiiiiittttttttttttttttt?’ Apparently, Mr. Casablancas, it is.

Myth #2: The Strokes are ‘minimalist’ musicians.

No. ‘Minimalism’ implies a stripped down, bells-and-whistles-free approach to musicmaking that paradoxically creates as grandiose and as powerful a statement as anything, well, ‘maximum-ist.’ Delta blues is ‘minimalist.’ Vintage punk is ‘minimalist.’ Mid-70s era Lou Reed is ‘minimalist.’ Let us not use ‘minimalist’ when we mean ‘generic,’ ‘backbone-free’ and ‘spare,’ all of which The Strokes are.

Myth #3: If the Strokes are indeed all of these things, then the same can be said of the whole NYC ‘garage rock’-type sound and all related bands, such as The White Stripes and Interpol.

Bands like The White Stripes and Interpol are minimalist: they do a lot with a little, and back up any deviations in songwriting ability or musicianship with faithful tributes to their influences and an honest resolve to do better, or at the very least, make an attempt to evolve without bartering any shred of integrity to fame and hubris. The White Stripes especially, have come leaps and bounds between White Blood Cells (2002) and Elephant (2003) they are a hot and rightfully lauded crew.

The most grating thing about the Strokes is that they do have the potential to be a decent band. Yet they (like their intensely obsessive fan base) are wholeheartedly content to just mail it in, as evidenced by the lack of progression between their first and second albums. Here is a group unwilling to put in the time to evolve, to win over their naysayers and ‘too much, too soon’ critics instead, they are content to continue wasting our time.

The most noticeable and serious problem surround the Strokes issue results from people who purport to be serious music lovers (and are, in many cases, established critics of the medium) jumping on the bandwagon so quickly for a vapid, boring band disguised as the artsy, fun, neo-Velvets saviors of rock and roll.

Rock doesn’t need saving. Though arguments over the deaths and rebirths of rock will always be compelling, it has never needed all that much saving except perhaps for some brief moments in the 1980s. But the Strokes are not compelling enough to even enter the argument. And they’re certainly not the saviors of anything rather, The Strokes stand as proof that advertising is everything, the hype machine lives and people really do value style over substance.

–Chad Berndtson