MUSIC SCENE
This is it: The Strokes turn back the punk clock
By Derek Paiva
Advertiser Staff Writer
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| The Strokes — Julian Casablancas, Nikolai Fraiture, Albert Hammond Jr. and Fabrizio Moretti, on ground — will play next week in Honolulu.
Gannett News Service The Strokes 7 p.m. Thursday; doors open at 6:30 p.m. World Cafe $20 526-4400 |
"How many of The Strokes does it take to screw in a lightbulb?" goes the query.
Answer: "One. As long as it's the sort of thing The Ramones would do."
Having your debut CD of coolly retro-reminiscent '70s-era New York City power punk grace the annual Top 10 lists of just about every music critic in the northern hemisphere is one thing. Having that debut garner most of its accolades for superbly ripping off just about every influential musician that came out of said city's potent '70s music scene is another.
And make no mistake, by the end of 2001, the New York City-based Strokes — singer/songwriter Julian Casablancas, guitarists Nick Valensi and Albert Hammond Jr., bassist Nikolai Fraiture, drummer Fabrizio Moretti, making their Honolulu debut in a Thursday concert — had experienced the kind of critical highs and lows that came with both.
"It's impossible to listen to this album without noting all the '70s punk/pop acts being ripped off left and right," said Time magazine in December, hailing The Strokes' "Is This It" as best album of 2001. Rolling Stone called the quintet of twentysomethings "the best young band in America" and their debut "the stuff of which legends are made."
And on the minority end of the critical spectrum?
"The band follows the manuals of hipness on sale at any Urban Outfitters — particularly the chapters on bands to ape in order to be cool," wrote the Houston Press. "Hence every damn song sounds like Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground." Fort Worth Star-Telegram music writer Dave Ferman labled the album "A horrible, poorly played ... nod to great '70s New Wave, metal and glam groups from The Stooges to Television."
The New York City-based Strokes have acknowledged only that The Velvet Underground was "hugely inspirational" as the group was perfecting its sound. In reality, "Is This It" is more often than not a creepily V.U.-reminiscent melange of dry (at times distorted) vocals, uncomplicated guitar and bass lines and casually melodic punk-lite rhythms. And that's about when the band starts sounding like The Stooges.
"It wasn't like we sat down and said, 'Let's shoot for this,'" Hammond told Penthouse magazine, defending the group's sound. "It was the opposite — like, 'Gimmicks don't last. They're great to boost you up fast, but then they go away.'"
Casablancas, Moretti and Valensi formed the group in 1998 while still teenagers at the decidedly less-than-punk Dwight School, a private prep school for the offspring of well-to-do Manhattan families. Fraiture and Hammond (friends of Casablancas' from grammar school and a short stint at Switzerland's L'Institut le Rosey, respectively) were asked to join not long after. Casablancas' father John ran Manhattan's famed Elite Modeling Agency and a chain of modeling schools. Hammond's father Albert Sr. made his own schlocky contributions to the '70s music scene, writing hits for himself ("It Never Rains In Southern California") and the likes of Leo Sayer ("When I Need You").
"We were searching for a sound for a long time and didn't know what it would end up being," Casablancas said in an October 2001 interview, recalling his songwriting development. "Anytime I would hear a song or a band, I would try to understand what their weak points were, as well as what their strong points were, and then absorb as much as I could learn from their mistakes."
The group holed itself up for much of 1999 in Manhattan's Music Building, mastering songs as fast as Casablancas' could write the hooks during all-night rehearsals, then sleepwalking off to day jobs at sunrise.
The incessant hype that would eventually surround The Strokes began building the minute they ventured out to play a handful of high-energy live shows at small New York clubs in the fall of that year.
By December 2000, the group was playing most of the songs that would eventually wind up on "Is This It" to overflow crowds at influential city clubs the Mercury Lounge and the Bowery Ballroom.
British label Rough Trade picked up on the substantial buzz surrounding The Strokes' live shows, releasing their three-song demo as "The Modern Age" EP in January 2001. When influential British music magazine NME declared that The Strokes would revolutionize rock 'n' roll, the group promptly sold out virtually every date on two British club tours.
By March, nearly every major American record label was eagerly wooing the band for its debut CD. The Strokes eventually signed with RCA in late spring.
"Is This It" was released in Britain in late summer, with a solid pop album chart debut at No. 2. Despite massive critical hype across the pond, near-zero American clamoring for the album resulted in a No. 74 Billboard debut in October. Although "Is This It" has sold more than 500,000 copies in the United States, it has yet to enter the top 50 of the Billboard album chart.
After playing to mostly sold-out clubs and mid-size spots around the United States since last fall, The Strokes will follow their relatively low-key Honolulu concert appearance with a four-date Japan tour and a heavily anticipated return swing through Britain and Europe through April. The band is tentatively set to begin recording its second CD later this year.
On tour, The Strokes have been playing a 40-minute set that takes on every track of "Is That It" garage-band ennui and nothing else (save for "New York City Cops," a song pulled off the U.S. CD release thanks to a post-Sept. 11 climate that could hardly be kind to a chorus that chants, "New York City cops ... they ain't too smart"). There will be no encores, no covers and nothing unreleased.
If anyone out there knows if The Ramones did the same, drop me an e-mail.
Reach Derek Paiva at 525-8005 or at dpaiva@honoluluadvertiser.com.
