Is This It?

Is This It - The Strokes - Album Review

Released in 2001, Is This It heralded the arrival of one of the most important bands of the decade, The Strokes. An album met with fawning from all quarters of the media, even being named album of the decade by the NME (it wasn't). Everyone else loved it too, it was named by many as the best album of the year (it wasn't), and described as one of the most important guitar band albums in years.

Despite this, The Strokes have never been a band that ever struck me as anything special. Boring music, boring singing and not the most unique band in the world, although to be fair to them, they did influence all of the tuneless indie that followed it in the last decade (and which saturated the market to such a point it all became completely identical and worthless). But, as there's nothing out this week, and since I told Harry i'd do it two months ago, i've thrown together what I feel about their debut album that spawned a decade of clones.

Remember last week's review of The Suburbs by Arcade Fire, and how I mentioned that despite it being over an hour long, you would never know this whilst listening to it? Is This It manages to go in completely the opposite direction, by being very short (11 songs, ranging from 2 and a half minutes to 3 minutes 58) and feeling like it'll never end. This is facilitated mainly by the fact that each songs sounds exactly the same, which is hardly surprising when you consider the genre it belongs to. I wanted to hate this album when I first listened to it and at first, I didn't. The second track, The Modern Age, is probably the best thing here, even if it only managed to achieve this by outshining other songs which aren't exactly the greatest pieces of musical composition ever.

If you've never heard The Strokes barring the riff for Reptilia in a telly show somewhere, or the intro to Last Nite which has been subsequently ripped off more times than anyone who travels by First Bus, then Is This It (and probably anything else they've ever done) can be summarised in three words:

1. Jangling. The guitar sounds like it's being played by Muhammad Ali in an earthquake, and this offers nothing to make the record memorable.

2. Drawling. Before I heard this, I thought the chap singing had an unintelligble voice. Now however, I realise that this cannot actually be the case, because for someone to have a voice that sounds like he's got a doormat clamped over his face requires either a deranged gibbon at the mixing desk, or him to have smoked a pile of Marlboro's that would put both the Cigarette Smoking Man from The X Files and the smokers from Chewin the Fat to shame. While there are a select few vocalists who can sing words you can't make out and remain palatable, Julian (i'm not trying to spell his surname) just bores you to tears, and makes you wish you could at least see him singing in person to see if this voice is real.

3. What? Beautifully applicable because i've had this album on a good few times this week to try and make any of it stand out for praise, and I can't. The only thing I can remember is the song already mentioned. The rest of the album is a complete blur, passing by in the manner of a condescending flick of the head, from someone with a woman's hair cut, a coat with an upturned collar and woman's jeans. The album reeks of the horrible indie subculture which arose in the 00's, and which I once considered myself to be a part of.

Is This It was released in 2001. Now, from 2001 to 2005 (the year I started buying music) I have 31 albums that fall into that timespace, so i'm not the most qualified to comment on how this album influenced music in that timescale, but after that, there are countless bands who fit the same cookie cutter mould that The Strokes seem to have pioneered, and the one that seems to have come closest to them and had the most prominence are Arctic Monkeys. Is that an achievement? That this album spawned a decade of utter shite from little jumped up twerps with hairstyles and regional singing voices? That's probably why I hate this album and band. That they were responsible for the only decent thing the music buying (moving in to ripping-off) public listened to, which could only be called decent because of the manufactured tripe it was up against. What a shame. Even with Is This It's legacy (which it doesn't deserve), I can't see what all the fuss is about.

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Next week.... christ knows. If you want anything, give me a shout. And I started to ramble this week, my apologies.