The Strokes began streaming their fourth LP, Angles, today after it was leaked to torrent sites a week ahead of release.
Angles drops amid one of the toughest times in the New York band’s career. Nick Valensi has already told us how much he hated recording it, Albert Hammond Jr returned to sessions straight outta rehab, Julian Casablancas recorded his vocals in another room…it’s not looking all that good. But hey, you knew all that already. We write about The Strokes almost every day. The only thing left to discuss is what Angles actually sounds like.
Let’s rephrase that proposition; did you like Casablancas’s ’80s-inspired solo record, Phrazes For The Young? Then you’ll be really into this, right down to the discernible lack of real drum sounds for most of the album and a bunch of overbearing synths which would drown the guitars if they weren’t so shiny. As much as Angles was supposedly a group project, with each member contributing equally, The Strokes has and always will be the Casablancas show. His voice, even more prominent and taking more chances than on anything in the band’s back catalogue, doesn’t sit back with his band anymore. It’s in your face, all the time, which means it takes a bit longer to hear the subtly gorgeous riffing of Valensi and Hammond, like on closer ‘Life Is Simple In The Moonlight’.
What Angles is, really, is a mish-mash of Strokes past and present. There’s stuff that sounds a lot like Room On Fire (‘You’re So Right’), First Impressions Of Earth (‘Metabolism’ with it’s insistent 6/8 pulse is the first cousin of ‘Heart In A Cage’) and then a classic rock shuffle, ‘Gratisfaction’ that is pretty much as Billy Joel as they come. Unlike every other album in the quintet’s back catalogue, there’s no definitive theme or direction here, which may be a by-product of the recording sessions or the group generally not liking each other. Some of these songs will end up sitting very nicely as part of a Strokes greatest hits catalogue when they next decide to tour the world and make sacks full of cash; notably ‘Macchu Pichu’, which everyone spent so much time stealing from blog sites that they forgot to actually listen to it and ‘Games’, which utilises icy keyboards as an opening for a brilliantly elastic groove. Even when Casablancas is off on another planet, the band are still tighter than a sealed Tupperware container. And that’s what the Strokes are really about.
Preliminary listening: 6.5/10. But that’s why streams are stupid.
Come back to us in a month when we’ve heard it at twenty different house parties.
Listen to Angles for yourself at The Strokes website.
Title Image by Simone Joyner via Getty
