The Strokes-First Impressions Of Earth

I’ve received 318 e-mails asking me for my thoughts on the new Strokes album, “First Impressions of Earth.” Think of this as my first impression of “First Impressions of Earth,” which actually would mean several impressions as I played the thing a few dozen times in the car, which may lead you to believe that I really like the new Strokes album, which wouldn’t be true at all.
It’s not as bad as you might think, and you need to consider the following before continuing:
1.) I bought The Strokes’ debut single when N.M.E. was shitting all over themselves at these spoiled, prep school rock boys.
2.) I spent additional cash to get the naughty cover copy of “Is This It,” an album which, regardless of your own opinion of this band, will continue to be highly regarded and highly influential, particularly across the pond.
3.) I think “Room On Fire” is a great follow-up, one that only suffers from being released immediately after the Strokes backlash began and from sounding too much like, go figure, a sophomoric album.
So what’s a touted rock band to do when poised to release their third album? You expand it. Fill it out. Polish it up.
It starts out great; “You Only Live Once” contains everything great about the band and builds a blueprint of what they needed to do to remain relevant after more print was spent on what The Strokes wear than what they sound like. For sure: when you start reading more about the parties the band attended than a show, a song, a session, it’s not hard to jump on the nuke the Knack bandwagon.
The second song, “Juicebox,” the album’s divisive first single with a Peter Gunn guitar riff underneath a snotty Julian Casablancas delivery, raised a few eyebrows when, by the time of the chorus, he actually sings. And if you recall, boys and girls, Lou Reed never really sang and we tolerated Tom Verlaine’s voice knowing that he was just setting up for an unbelievable guitar solo.

Saint Julian doesn’t play guitar. But guitarist Albert Hammond and Nic Valensi do, and “First Impressions of Earth” is the first Strokes album in which we see how good they’ve become over the past five years. Example: on side one’s closer “Vision of Division” the guitar solo absolutely shreds, and when the racket finally ends, Casablancas mutters “I’m such a success.” Perfect.
When you reach the end of side one, you start to consider that “First Impressions of Earth” is, in fact, a very good album. The problems start creeping up immediately at the beginning of side two. One of the things that was cool about The Strokes was a common complaint lodged by their detractors: they’re boring. Exactly. That’s the point. Boys in their early twenties in New York City that seem positively bored with their surroundings. Huh? Try spending a weeknight in smalltown Iowa, fellas. Now, particularly with “Ask Me Anything,” they seem not only bored with their surroundings, but bored with the notion that they’re supposed to actually deliver a stellar third album. More than ever: this was supposed to be their comeback album, and side two sounds like they’d rather be at a fucking cocktail party instead of being in the studio. Proof? I swear that Julian said something like “Took a shit/It was fine” in the song “15 minutes.” I’m not sure about this. It sure sounds like he said this. The point is, when you start mumbling about bowel movements, maybe it’s time to consider a career change.
Why haven’t they? Julian seems to answer that on the last song “Red Light” with the line “Do it for the people that’d die for your sake/An entire generation that has nothing to say” which may point to why they finally gave up. Why bother striving to release an intentionally excellent album to a fickle Generation Y who’ve already moved on to another next big thing and who will just download your shit for free anyway? The point is, gentlemen, because you’ve got to give us a reason to buy your shit. It seems that everyone but Julian on this album understands that rock music is their fucking job, and while his cynicism is kind of precocious in small doses, over the course of an entire album side, he turns into the guy at work that nobody likes to socialize with because he’s always got a chip on his shoulder. Lighten up, buddy. There’s a lot of us who still dream about fucking models while RCA picks up the bar tab for the entire evening. The frustrating thing is how, if he would have invested just a little more focus on “First Impressions of Earth” the band would have delivered what was expected of them on their third offering.