6.8
Is This It is easily one of the best albums of the past ten years. It’s hard to believe it’s been ten years since that landmark record hit the shelves. The Strokes return after a long break from the musical world after the slightly unsuccessful release of third LP First Impressions of Earth. Now Angles is here with promises to “return to the basics” from bassist Nikolai Fraiture, that’s a reassuring thought, but from a first listen of Angles it isn’t entirely true.
That garage, rough-around-the-edges feel that The Strokes established on Is This It is nowhere present in Angles. So I don’t see how this could be a return to the basics; in fact, I find that Angles seems to continue on the path of First Impressions of Earth with more studio experimentation and tweaking around with different vocals effects, especially on bizarre track “You’re So Right”. The album really does sound like it comes from five different people as opposed to being put together by a unit of musicians. Instead, the band worked fractured with singer Julian Casablancas sending the rest of the band vocals completely recorded elsewhere.
This aspect of a “fractured recording process” might be the immediate downfall of the whole album. Looking at musical history, some of the most successful albums ever crafted were created in a short, focused recording session. That’s not always true; some great albums were created with long stretches of time. Who knows exactly the perfect time limit of putting out an album? Whatever The Strokes did on Angles didn’t work. Only two tracks on the album have a wonderful “Strokes” feel to it: “Under Cover of Darkness” and “Machu Picchu”, both guitar heavy, full of nice little hooks, and straight to the point instead of trying to find a purpose like tracks like “Call Me Back” or “Games”.
With touches of new wave all over the album, Angles feels very ‘80s in nature. With a cool, synth-covered track of “Games” presents one of the most “out there” Strokes songs to date. The direction of some of the tracks like “Games” isn’t good; in fact, the vibe of most of the tracks is weird and disjointed. The only “out there” track that is enjoyable is “Two Kinds of Happiness” which has some excellent guitar work with Albert Hammond, Jr. That track and the two before it (“Machu Picchu”, “Under Cover of Darkness”) save Angles from being a complete flop.
The final song, “Life Is Simple In the Moonlight”, mostly sums up the whole entire album in one. Starting with a good promise of bringing a very catchy intro but then builds up into something very unmemorable and reaches a point to where it feels greatly rushed. Unfortunately The Strokes have made a worse album then the ladder, First Impressions. The more delving I did in Angles the more it deteriorated for me and it showed how unmemorable it really is. The Strokes are great musicians that have a knack for create great guitar rock, unfortunately with overused methods of trying to “expand their sound” is unsuccessful and fails, but not to say that the entire album is a failure, there are some great tracks on the LP, but bad ones bog it completely down as unmemorable.
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