The Strokes: Is This It poll

bound gagged and loving it hahaha xp

bound>>gagged>>>kidnapped>>>>>>>>>>is this it

I love the Exploding Hearts; they were full of great songs, lots of dynamic range, and fun teenage energy. RIP!
The Strokes are kind of a different band though; they are more understated and controlled. Certainly, this can be seen as a bad thing, but I choose to see it as music for a different mood.

Even in 2001, I didn't get what was such a revelation about this record (why it was "saving" rock)

Nobody said this seriously besides the crackhead designers of rock mag covers.

Also, WTF was up with the Television and Velvet Underground comparisons when The Strokes first popped on the scene? Couldn't be more rong

People always talk about Loveless being the death knell of rock

The kind of death knells that knock over straw men.

They are this generation's "The Knack"?

― Philip Nunez, Wednesday, July 8, 2009 7:23 PM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

they wish

Bee OK, Wednesday, July 8, 2009 2:18 AM (17 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink
Other messages have been posted since you last looked... Please review and if you want to change your message, do so before posting.

Also, WTF was up with the Television and Velvet Underground comparisons when The Strokes first popped on the scene? Couldn't be more rong

― Johnny Fever, Wednesday, July 8, 2009 7:49 PM (29 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ummmm because they sound a lot like television, i guess.

i didn't understand the VU thing at all until i heard the pre-album version of "Modern Age" with the super Lou Reedalike vox, but the album itself not so much

ummmm because they sound a lot like television, i guess.

I don't hear it at all. Television is really wiry, and The Strokes have all the nuance of a cinder block.

A collection of fan responses to Is This It would make a dandy addendum to this thread:

Poll: Bandwagonesque v. Nevermind v. Loveless

yeah "the modern age" kinda has that muffled, methodical chug of early VU songs

they sound absolutely nothing like VU though; that comparison always seemed really lazy and misguided ('they're from NEW YORK!!!'), and i think it made people have wrong expectations about them. i don't remember ever hearing the strokes champion themselves as saviors of rock or whatever, but all the hype made us hate them all the more when they didn't do it-- even though they never claimed they were on such a mission. that's why it was hard for some of us to swallow "Is This It" without having some cultural prejudice about it, or want to hate it out of instinct.

yeah but, like i said, their first singles that got them all the early press had SUPER lou reed-y vocals, it's not some shock that set the tone for a lot of their coverage.

my local alt-rock station always plays the pre-Is This It version of "Last Night" and I just HATE the way it's sung on that version -- not real into Casablancas but he definitely toned down his worst tendencies by the time they cut the LP.

what does "lou reed-y vocals" mean? tuneless?

I was 27 when ITI was released and I liked it a lot – it made my top ten, and "Someday" and "The Modern Age" were always played at a Miami club called Revolver. I knew it was an accident: that they were a really good minor band with one more album left in them. Rooms On Fire turned out to be their Candy-O: they had their shit down. I don't want to hear them again but they summon good times.

idk, they sound enough like television to me. not hearing the similarities "at all" sounds like some narcissism in respect of small differences ish to me. it would be ok if they hadn't been hyped as a big deal, changing the face of indie rock (well, ok as in easier to ignore), but they were. they aren't bad, just really minor.

i don't get the VU comparison so much, but the television sound is pretty hard to ignore.

listen to the EP version of "Modern Age" and tell me he's not doing a straight up LR impression

'The thing that blew my mind first hearing the Strokes was that they were the closest I had heard rock come to classical,' she says. 'Their music is extraordinarily orderly and composed. It's almost

i guess to some extent sonically they're like Television, but TV was just so supple and jazzy and had such amazing little virtuoso moments even between the guitar solos, the Strokes are so steady and chug-chug-chug that i can't really think of those bands in the same category at all

not hearing the similarities "at all" sounds like some narcissism in respect of small differences ish to me.

Well I mean if you're counting the fact both bands share guitars, bass and drums, then yeah...I guess I do hear the similarities. I've never been a big Television fan either, but the comparison is apples to doo doo.

they're The Cars, dude.

not really, even after they openly courted that comparison on the 2nd album

listen to the EP version of "Modern Age" and tell me he's not doing a straight up LR impression

yeah, you got me there; at times it sounds ridiculously like Lou Reed. That was the first indication of any relation to VU I've ever heard. but yet, this VU shit still factored into nearly ever review I read of the album, which doesn't sound like this.

here it is for those of you who want to play along at home
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRZyKYOX0Cc

Oh dang, I'd forgotten how much more BANG the ep versions had of those songs. If they'd have released just that and then nothing ever again, I'd be on the other side of this whole argument.

seems to me like the main difference is the production

Yeah, the sound of the albums is a big part of why I don't like them much. They have the worst drum sound I've ever heard, ever.

(but I also think they're repetitive as hay-ull)

the reason i like the album better than the pre-album stuff is because JC stopped pronouncing things in a corny rawk singer way like "hay-ull"

the tunes on this album are good though. i once towed the standard contrarian line about how this was soulless hype, but it convinced me otherwise-- unlike forgettable "critic's choice" bullshit like, oh, let's say Burial, Shearwater, MIA, Dizzee Rascal, Fleet Foxes... oh god-- I could go on all day.

It is hard to believe this was not written by a Mr. Snrub sockpuppet.

he's not Jesus Christ but his initials are the same.

It is hard to believe this was not written by a Mr. Snrub sockpuppet.

why? because someone else thought all that was overrated crap? i'm almost always disappointed by these albums that everyone raves to high heaven about (and then stops talking about 2 months after release).

(yeah, not all of the stuff I mentioned got forgotten, but most of it is quite mediocre, IMO)

OT: Even though I almost never listen to them, it chaps my ass when people slag Shearwater because one of my friends is in the band.

(and it probably shouldn't, because I know I would absolutely join in the slagging if he wasn't)

i'm almost always disappointed by these albums that everyone raves to high heaven about (and then stops talking about 2 months after release).

You have just described almost every album ever made (particularly in the age of advance leaks)! Congratulations!

(I know I'm as guilty as the next person of the hyperbolic dismissal but considering that threads about Dizzee Rascal and M.I.A. went on for more than a year and the Burial and Fleet Foxes threads had similar longevity, that post smacks of willfully ignoring what other people are actually talking about just because you don't like it.)

if he willfully ignored hype about records he probably had no reason to believe he'd like, he wouldn't have anything to whine about

if you can't hear television in 'soma', just fer example, then you're a kings of leon stan

haha, come on, they don't really sound like Television. There might be a touch of it (stuttery guitar), but to name them as a major sonic touchstone for the Strokes is misguided.

Someday. Because GBV are in the video.

(I know I'm as guilty as the next person of the hyperbolic dismissal but considering that threads about Dizzee Rascal and M.I.A. went on for more than a year and the Burial and Fleet Foxes threads had similar longevity, that post smacks of willfully ignoring what other people are actually talking about just because you don't like it.)

sorry, i wasn't being literal-- as my follow-up comment tried unsuccessfully to suggest. i'm trying to say that I typically find the hype usually completely out of sync with the goods. anyway, let's move on before someone's feelings get hurt.

(on another note, ever find it odd that normal conversations that you'd have with friends in person always seem to veer into strangely unpleasant directions online?)

I thought they were aping Television too, in fact it seemed totally obvious at the time (and nothing wrong with that, I can't think of a better band to try to be like). I also find it a bit hard to see why now, but then again I can't really think of anyone whom the Strokes sound more like.

I did have a couple of significant problems with this album, though, that stopped me from ever loving it. Some of it's just too boring e.g. 'Is This It?' I always found a really underwhelming beginning. And the sleeve is horrible, I just don't get why they'd go with such an unappealing image - better to have just stuck Bowersock on the front cover (who was he anyway?)

i guess the main thing that keeps me from saying, oh yeah they're totally like television is that the Strokes' guitar playing is kinda inept -- maybe not in a bad way, but it's not like Verlaine/Lloyd. And the same could be said for the rhythm section too.

Well, Gordon Raphael's production covers up a multitude of those instrumental deficiencies, but having seen them live in early 2002 I can vouch for the solidness of the rhythm section.

Someday. Because GBV are is in the video.

― SourPatchCorpse, Wednesday, July 8, 2009 4:05 PM (28 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

woops, cause Slash is in the video

Some of it's just too boring e.g. 'Is This It?'

the bass in this song was what really hooked me (i was really unsure for the preceding 20 or so seconds)

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_-mlQlDuwWik/R5KNAxo0NrI/AAAAAAAABlI/jufuEYx5JoA/s400/The+Strokes+-+Room+on+fire+-+Back.jpg
A big part of their appeal was that they looked great, they should have made more of it and gone with a group shot for the sleeve. I really liked them in this one from the back of 'Room On Fire' (barcode notwithstanding).

does anyone know the story of why they changed the cover for the U.S. market, only could find this on Wiki:

The cover of the latter features a black-and-white photo of a gloved hand on a woman's naked backside, shown in semi-profile, and is said to reference Spinal Tap's fictitious Smell the Glove. The naked model on the cover was photographer Colin Lane's girlfriend at the time. The North American version replaces this with an image of particle collisions in the Big European Bubble Chamber and replaced the song "New York City Cops" with "When It Started".