An Amateur Review of Professional Kickassery

I've always been the type that garners a certain kind of pleasure from learning how things work -- the human mind, an engine,** continental drift, cheese -- and instead of killing the awestrike* of watching the sun set amidst a wild melange of color o'er verdant fields of grass and weed, understanding how something works manages only to enhance the experience for me. It's art. It's science. It's pretty cool.

* (defn: [aw-strahyk]; verb, noun; the act of being slapped around by the overwhelming  feeling of reverence, admiration, fear, etc.,  produced by that which is grand, sublime, extremely powerful)

** though maybe not the engine thing so much. I'll settle for a superficial understanding of combustion engines, thank you. 

I'm also interested in understanding what makes some music work -- whether one song or an entire album -- while other music, sadly, does not. The music I've been thinking on the past week was pretty recently borne into the world. I'm writing, of course - or not of course - about The Strokes fifth full-length album, Comedown Machine, released end of March.

I've read a half-dozen or more other reviews of Comedown Machine as a matter of general curiosity. (Isn't it weird how dearly you wish that other people will enjoy the things you love most - not for your own validation, but to know that other people know just how wonderful certain wonderful things are? That's not just me, is it?) Each review I read, excepting one in ALL CAPS LOCK that got far too annoying to finish, used the album's immediate predecessor, Angles, and the band's breakout album, Is This It?, as major points of reference. Many of the comparisons I saw seemed to lack any intimate familiarity with the band's discography nor with its members' solo musical careers. As a long-time fan, perhaps I can provide a different view of the thing.

I have gone and come back to The Strokes a few different times since 2001, then a young tot of 13, having since gained a profound appreciation for their music as a complex art - an exquisite amalgam of musical texture, lyrical creativity, cyclical tension and release, and a balance between continuity and change. And that's just for a start. Is this getting too hoity-toity for you? Oh, well.

While I'm no musical theoretician, I did take a semester of Music Appreciation at university. Through the Honors Program even. So I suppose I can say I have a pretty thorough understanding of how one is to appropriately appreciate music. Inappropriate music appreciation is just so... inappropriate. Y'know what I mean? It's just plain ol' dangerous.

As for my review of Comedown Machine?

I love it.

You didn't think that was all, did you? All that introductory verbosity for a three-word review? Here are three more words for you:

Don't be silly.

 I'm going to ramble in this vein until your brain's abuzz with a verve for musical appreciation. It's going to get pretty exciting in here. (I bet you can't wait for the excitement that will be my post on continental drift. Now there's a zinger.)

Back to the point we're all here for: Comedown Machine has been playing on a loop since I received my copy in time for the holiday weekend. I've gotten to know it as well as the hair on my heinie. I've even made a graph. Of the album, not my butt fuzz. I think CM manages wonderfully to act as a cohesive and fluid whole, a quality I felt to be a little lacking with Angles. Which is kind of a funny thing as there is not a single song on their fourth record that I dislike. As an entire listening experience, however, the album left something to be desired. I'll save that for a little later.

This fifth album opens with a great nostalgic turn towards 80s synth with definite undercurrents of old Strokes and a skosh of Casablancas solo album Phrazes for the Young. The few opening seconds of 50/50 is reminiscent of Is This It?'s 'New York City Cops' before it morphs into an entirely different beast. The titular track, #5, startled me a little. Not in the sense that it was unusual, but because I caught myself singing this slow tune to myself at work out of the blue. The latter half of the record keeps up with the first half without incident. The refrain of Partners in Crime goes all zoot suit on us in the second half, a catchy little ditty if I've ever heard one. The highlight of the album for me ended up being the lovely partnership between the third and fourth tracks, 'One Way Trigger' and 'Welcome to Japan', respectively. But they are only two standouts in a line of eleven.

For me, The Strokes is written all over this record, though I know for some reviewers it seemed to depart too much from their identifying rocker sound of Is This It?, Room on Fire, and to some extent First Impressions of Earth. Other critics sounded skeptical of Casablancas' ability to sustain his lovely falsetto outside the recording studio were The Strokes to bring these tunes on tour. Fingers crossed for a tour. To their skepticism I say, for anyone who's ever seen this, we can feel confident that our lead vocalist will be up to the job -- so long as we don't require he play guitar and remember all the lyrics at the same time. A little joke.... and a lit'le bit true. It's endearing though, right?

Other critics have opined that the band still seems in search of their direction, lost since their parting after FIOE - and perhaps even earlier when they purportedly left behind some of their original "scruffy charm", pursuant to that "bigger sound" with their third album. I'm not sure, but I think a changing of direction is to be expected with anything human. And I don't think that's a bad thing at all. Their growth and change over the years has felt quite natural to my ear, untrained though it is, and their sound has managed to retain a certain strain of continuity while deftly avoiding the plague of stylistic stagnation. Plus, they're still full to brim with scruffy charm if you ask me.

Artist's rendering of their musical direction - adrift a sea of meaninglessness. (Not to scale.)

When it comes to  identity -- be it a group or personal identity --  (a topic I do have some major knowledge on. Literally. It was part of one of my college majors.) there are different camps that hold polarized views on the flexibility and fixedness of identity. In a gross oversimplification, I would say there are those who believe that within each of us there exists a kernel of true, innate identity -- a Self-ness, so to speak -- which we must only uncover and discover through self-reflection, experience, and a happy trail of  mistakes. From this perspective, our Self is stable, fixed, resistant to drastic change. Our tastes for food may evolve over time, but certain personality traits shall never waver. If we are shy as children, we shall be shy adults. Anyone who acts otherwise is just pretending. I for one know that I shall never enjoy a pickle. But me shy? Bah.

In another camp on quite a different end of the spectrum, there are those who believe that our Selves are about as fixed as a lump of rock hurtling through the cosmos. We may gravitate a little towards different bodies (planetary or otherwise) as we pass by and they may alter our path forevermore, but there is nothing to say that we couldn't just as easily shoot off in the other direction or sizzle and burn in the senseless heat of our plasmic sun. That last part of the metaphor might be death, but I can't be sure. The senseless heat might be something metaphorical, too ...Chili peppers?

So far, there has been little to no sizzling or burning for The Strokes. Not in the bad death way anyway. Nor in the chili pepper enema way either, I can only imagine. Some wrote that CM had an air of being a fifth and "final" album. I would beg to differ and am immensely excited to think that at this very moment our five favorite New Yorkers might even be starting to recharge for their next musical exertion. I think something smart and new is just getting started for these guys.

And before I go, I'll just say that the above illustration was not the hair-butt graph I was talking about. This is:

Now don't tell me that's not excessive in all its handsome creaminess. I tried it out to figure out if this ("this" reads: "tension-release") had anything to do with my funky feelings toward Angles. I may have put the finger on the nose. The hammer on the head. The bees on the knees. All that and more. They sure ratcheted up the tension in their fourth album by way of a number of things: textural layer, tempo, lack of at least a couple decently slower melancholic numbers. It doesn't give a whole lot of room to breath. It's similar with visual art. The composition needs to balance areas of interest with places the viewer can rest their eyes. An anchor. Too much information and the mind can't take in much of anything. Give a person space to reflect and relax and some much-needed mental mastication is possible. Obviously a graph like this will differ from one person to another, but you oughtn't feel the need to make your own graph for my sake. I do things like this for fun. Yeah, I'm that kind of person.

I've thought of shuffling some of the tracks on Angles around to see if I can get something to work. When it comes to artists I especially enjoy, I want an cohesive listening experience over the course of the album. Sometimes listened to on a loop, as discussed. I've never gotten that particular urge so with Angles and have only shuffled its tracks into a few playlists for a bit of fleshing out. Assuming a successful reshuffling on my part, all of that may change, and very soon.

UPDATE:
So I set out to create a tracklist that carried a similar flow and cohesion I felt with every other Strokes album, and here it is, alongside some pretty schnazzy album art I whipped up. At least moderately schnazzy album art. With a pinch of aimless meandering. And salt. (Rock sea salt. None of that pansy table variety.)

It didn't even need new art. I just enjoy doing weird and pointless things. Like wandering through your yard with a pair of shears to trim each and every blade of grass to the most aesthetically pleasing height. But, then, instead of using the shears to cut the grass, you hurl your gut upon its glittering apex rather than trim 4 acres of grass with shears, which I'm pretty sure is just a fancy word for scissors. Or like graphing things that don't require graphing. See above... and below.
Oh, the simple joys in life.

I think it's about time for that tracklist. I tried one alteration for a few days... still didn't work. This is my second go, which works for me. Plus, it makes a pretty graph.
(original track number in parenthesis - another useless fun tidbit)

1. Games (6)

2. Machu Picchu (1)

3. Under Cover of Darkness (2)

4. Gratisfaction (8)

5. Call Me Back (7)

6. Taken for a Fool (5)

7. You're So Right (4)

8. Two Kinds of Happiness (3)

9. Life is Simple in the Moonlight (10)

10. Metabolism (9)

 Note the beautiful angularity of their artistic direction.

All set wonderfully adrift a sea of meaninglessness, don't forget.

And just because I know everyone is wondering, here is a permutation on the comparative graph above. Enjoy, geeks.

The blinding magenta line follows my own arrangement, which I cobbled together on instinct. When I graphed it, I wasn't all too surprised to see its new, much up-and-downier shape. Now that's what I like to hear.