(From 2003. Check out the song and artist links via iTunes.)
In a classic case of retrospective predestination, I was talking to a friend a few months ago about the dearth of good albums lately. Note the use of “albums” rather than “music.” There is some awesome music being produced, some great songs, nowadays. But I was lamenting the lack of latter-day Joshua Trees, Neverminds, Siamese Dreams, and Vs’ses.
Then fate intervened with The Strokes: Is This It? The various copies of iTunes I have tell me I’ve listened to the entire album well over 50 times in toto (if one adds in CD and iPod listens), over the past few months. I cannot get enough of it. This is a Good Album.
Robert Hilburn, LA Times Music Critic and Ye Olde Bob Dylan Comparer, had an article in the Times: Strokes delight, but is this it? Managing to not mention Bob Dylan once in this (admittedly short) article, he asks,
One of the more intriguing questions in pop these days, however, is whether the Strokes will eventually be a chapter or a footnote in this movement.
“The movement” of course refers to The Strokes, The White Stripes, The Vines, The Hives, and numerous other less-MTV‘d bands who, for whatever reason, don’t suck as much as their immediate predecessors on the conveyor belt. Somehow, Hilburn manages to compare The Strokes to both The Velvet Underground (agreed) and The Cars (borderline).
The reason these four bands in particular Don’t Suck is that you can hear actual emotion in their songs. That’s right, folks, real-life emotion, not Emotion® or Emotion© or Emotion: My Story (as told to my ghostwriter).
Hilburn decries the lack of depth in The Strokes’ freshman effort, and I can hear what he’s saying. These are not complicated songs with complicated stories, nor needing complicated deconstruction to understand. However, I would point out that most old-school rock is not too complicated (something which Hilburn talks about a bit in the article; could it be more wishy-washy?). And I could write another 1000 words on how important music+emotion is to me/us/everybody. But instead, I’ll leave it to a stanza in that U2 re-make of a Dylan song,
All I got is a red guitar / Three chords and the truth.
Or better yet, how about this from the Velvet Underground:
Jenny said, when she was just five years old
There was nothin’ happening at all
Every time she puts on the radio
There was nothin’ goin’ down at all, not at all
Then, one fine mornin’, she puts on a New York station
You know, she couldn’t believe what she heard at all
She started shakin’ to that fine, fine music
You know, her life was saved by rock’n’roll
Despite all the imputations
You know, you could just go out
And dance to a rock’n’roll station
And it was all right, hey baby,
You know, it was all right
The Strokes rock. That is it, and that’s all right.
