Strokes

I just wanted to be one of The Strokes

(Alex Turner)

Retromania is the spot-on, fittingly rather fashion-conscious term that brilliant English critic Simon Reynolds – who has coined a fair few rock terms that later entered common usage – found to describe the 2000s' tendency, in music and in style at large, to devour the past and spit it back out renewed. If today retromania is a runaway beast that eludes any rule, trend or classification, thrashing about in every direction yet having become incapable of defining its own era, at the start of the millennium it changed the times rather decisively. Just think of everything we spent a good decade calling indie-rock, recognizing it as such, when it was really nothing more than the alt crowd's dazzling, tailor-made patchwork of musical trends decades old.

It's fair to say, without fear of exaggeration, that the record with which it all began, at least at a midstream level, is none other than "Is This It" by The Strokes. Perhaps only one other album had a comparable impact, namely "Turn On The Bright Lights" by Interpol, released the following year and decidedly steered toward darker atmospheres. Yet the Strokes' debut carries even greater weight. Not only did it pave the way for a whole brood of dozens upon dozens of like-minded bands on both sides of the Atlantic, but it also put rock back at the center of pop culture and fashion. It's the Strokes' fault that an entire generation of indie kids started wearing leather jackets, horizontal-striped t-shirts and skinny jeans. A meticulously curated aesthetic, whose genesis and evolution sometimes takes on dizzying implications thanks to frontman Julian Casablancas, son of John, the New York entrepreneur of Spanish descent who co-founded Elite Model Management with Alan Kittler – the agency at the center of the world's top catwalks, with over 2,000 models between Paris, Milan, London and of course New York – and of Jeanette Christensen, former Miss Denmark in 1965. A child of privilege, in other words. But above all, a prodigy. Not just at the microphone and in songwriting and composition, but also as a captivating visual presence and, de facto, the band's stylist.

In the 2000s the Strokes were everywhere, from the stages of the world's best festivals to the pages of Vogue, infiltrating the jet set just as much as the gossip rags. Success wasn't instant, though: "Is This It" wasn't an immediate bestseller, especially in the United States, but thanks partly to RCA's strategy of rolling it out gradually around the world, complete with parallel tours, it infected the globe bit by bit, spawning converts virtually everywhere. Alex Turner of the Arctic Monkeys, no small name himself, would go on to sing "I Just Wanted To Be One Of The Strokes" ("Star Treatment"), perfectly capturing the band's generational impact.

Formed as a trio in 1998, the Strokes were anything but rockstar prototypes – quite the opposite, really. They were instead the sons of a trendy, irresistible New York, one with an ambiguous, skewed allure. Just think of the aforementioned Julian: a rich kid who grew up in luxury and ended up in rehab for alcohol and drug abuse at just 15. Nor were childhood friend Nikolai Fraiture (bass) and Albert Hammond Jr. (guitar) any less privileged, both of them his schoolmates at a prestigious Swiss boarding school (Le Rosey Institute). Rounding out the lineup were second guitarist Nick Valensi and Brazilian-born drummer Fabrizio Moretti. Five paragons of coolness, as well as compulsive music-devourers since they were in diapers.

Change everything by inventing nothing. That's the simple, effective formula behind "Is This It": connecting the dots between styles spanning decades, with their glorious New York – as ever part mother, part friend, part lover, part whore – as the single, unmistakable center of gravity. The irresistible skeletal grooves of The Velvet Underground, the goofball revolution of The Ramones and the razor-sharp guitar interplay of Television: this is the recipe behind the "revolution". A personal reinterpretation delivered through Casablancas' sly, deliberately slurred voice – a way of singing and phrasing lines that's practically one of a kind. To please the more imaginative among us, one could picture a mischievous hybrid of Alan Vega and David Yow. Acidic, unsettling rock'n'roll, then. But also buckets of garage grit and the toughest strain of new wave.

The legendary CBGB as North Star, and off we go, toward gallons of booze and delirious fans: "The Modern Age" screams Velvet Underground in every single part of it, from the Maureen Tucker-style drumming to Casablancas' ga-ga-ga-gas; while the loose-limbed, brash "New York City Cops" is essentially a 2000s garage classic, complete with its exclusion from the American version of the album thanks to its cocky, repeated refrain, "New York City Cops/Ain't too smart". It was replaced by "When It Started" on the US release, because that chorus line was deemed potentially offensive to the city's police force, still reeling at the time, of course, from the events of September 11th.

Beyond the sheer strength of the tracklist, which doesn't have a single weak spot, the record's power lies in its raw, rough dryness. Initially entrusted to Gil Norton, who among many other things produced the Pixies, the album's first production nevertheless struck Casablancas as too glossy, even pretentious. Showing a resolve and nerve rare for a debut band, the five of them fired the producer and scrapped everything they'd recorded with Norton, opting instead for the far less known Gordon Raphael.

Holed up in the ramshackle basement of Manhattan's Transporterraum, the musicians and producer thus brought the 11 tracks of "Is This It" to life, following one rule everyone agreed on: no tricks. Not only was the music recorded rejecting production gimmickry and studio polish of any kind, but it was also built around pure essentiality. Indeed, "Is This It" doesn't contain a single note more than strictly necessary. There's no resorting to heavy-handed effects. Everything sounds as real as possible. It's all steeped in a naive hedonism – a formula that's carefully calculated yet instinctive at the same time. And it's perhaps in this underlying paradox that the Strokes' alchemy is born. That's the whole secret of their success right there. But not only that: Albert Hammond Jr.'s technical mastery is plain for all to see. "Is This It" thus offers up eleven "rough" diamonds. Perhaps the only track that feels a touch more processed, mostly thanks to the drive of a drum machine, is the dazzling "Hard To Explain", a brilliant hit in the vein of the unforgettable Cars.

New York isn't just an aesthetic and musical reference point for the Strokes, but also the beating heart of the album's lyrics, all centered on so-called urban youth. Frenzy, dazzling lights, dark alleys, sensuality, excess, trends and eccentricities, difficulty connecting with others, relationship instability: the message lands with tremendous force, once again thanks to Casablancas' versatile delivery, now whiny, now abrasive and headlong.

Julian sounds like he ended up at the mic almost by chance, talking to us in the first person. About a friend or a girl, about his own intentions, about how he screwed them up. He talks to us one-on-one, as if we were at a bar downing cocktails together, as if we already knew who the hell he's talking about. He's part actor, part comedian. Chansonnier and rogue. A narrative genius, without question. A Tarantino-esque character. The kind of guy who'd skip the line just by talking his way through. A magician, but also a snake charmer. Julian's demons, met far too soon, echo throughout, slang after slang. The effect is thoroughly engrossing, and it often makes you feel like you're actually there, at a party on the Upper East Side, strolling through Central Park in autumn, or window-shopping along the gleaming storefronts of Fifth Avenue.

For an ambiguous "Barely Legal", which imagines the thoughts of a girl who has just reached the age of consent, we then get a snarling take on the difficulty of maintaining normal relationships, the aforementioned "Modern Age". Then there's "Soma", which borrows its name from Aldous Huxley's imaginary drug (from "Brave New World") to speak of drug use and of feeling at ease within a fashionable crowd one doesn't quite feel worthy of. Wonderful and powerful here is the steep guitar landslide, Television-style, built by the Hammond Jr./Valensi duo.

Above all, though, we have the generational anthem "Last Nite", nothing more than the tale of a bad night out, driven by an upbeat drum pattern and a nimble, trend-setting bassline. Nothing special, right? And yet who can't relate to it? Who would have the nerve to leave the party? No one, especially not with a couple of simply perfect guitar slashes thrown in and a chorus rasped out just right, howling about the prevailing lack of understanding among the young. Nobody understands anybody – "They Don't Understand", "They Can't Understand": not your mum, not your girlfriend, not your grandad, not your grandkids. Not even aliens looking down from a spaceship. Nothing makes sense, and what's more, the words seem to set up conversations that follow trajectories even harder to grasp than the chaotic dance of the famous plastic bag caught in the wind in "American Beauty", the one that lets Ricky glimpse a longed-for higher order. The Strokes' own brand of pataphysics is thus served.

Another wave of sensuality arrives instead with "Alone, Together", which dishes out tips on good cunnilingus amid a geometric thicket of frantic, cutting guitars. Sex, in all its necessary ambiguity, indeed permeates the whole record, starting with its iconic cover – also censored in the American version, which instead depicts the Big Bang, namely a detail of a particle collision carried out in CERN's particle accelerator. The European version, thankfully, stayed true to the original: we're talking about the most famous backside in indie rock, that of photographer Colin Lane's girlfriend, fresh out of the shower, with a suggestive latex glove resting on her buttocks.

The only concession to more relaxed, though still driving, rhythms and sounds comes with "Someday", a gently melodic track in which Casablancas lays out his good intentions for a relationship, shifting between a clenched-teeth delivery and the softest falsetto. It's yet another entry in a series of gripping vocal registers that live up to the band's moniker's promise, namely the strokes: sometimes as forceful as a whip-crack, sometimes as soft as a gloved caress.

"Take It Or Leave It" is the definitive closing statement. Both for the band's by-then-unmistakable riff and for the shift in tempo. But especially for the lyrics, never so irreverent, so biting. A kind of live and let die updated to the erotic obsessions of the 2000s. The last word of a debut that would define an era, followed two years later by the equally all-consuming "Room On Fire", an album containing new generational anthems like the untouchable "Reptilia", before Casablancas began hopping from one band to another, in search of perpetual redemption and new magic formulas, without ever truly abandoning the mother ship.

God bless the Strokes. In sæcula sæculorum.

Leave me alone

I’m in control, I’m in control

And girls act too much and boys act too tough

Enough is enough

Well, on the minds of other men, I know she was

Ride the wave of great music

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10/10/2021