“Work hard and say it’s easy, do it just to please me” ~ The Modern Age
As music fanatics, we all have that one album that made us love music. The one album which changed our lives. It’s been there for us during everything we’ve gone through. Well, this is mine. ‘Is This It’ changed my life. Here’s how it changed the music scene.
Hailed as the next Rolling Stones based on their debut EP (The Modern Age, 2001), it wasn’t hard to see why. A raucous live show, stripped-down guitars, a metronomic drummer, and a charismatic lead singer. The sky was the limit. When they released their album on July 30, 2001, in Australia, it garnered amazing press. The album answered its own titular question – this was it.
The album had it all. It encapsulated the ennui of a young adult’s life in New York. The wistfulness, the excitement, the fury and most importantly – the confusion. The constant, nagging fear of not knowing whether you’ve done enough is perfectly encapsulated in Julian Casablancas’ lyrics and voice. His monotone voice might have driven a few away, but what he lacked in tonality, he made up for in character. Screaming, passionate, there was never a dull moment with him on the microphone. The spiky, distorted guitar riffs and arpeggios complement each other perfectly, feeding off of each other to create intricate, sinuous passages of music. The rhythm section is perfectly in tune with each other, with Nikolai Fraiture’ bass lines and Fabrizio Morretti’ simple drum beats driving the song along faultlessly.
The song which best conveys this is ‘Hard to Explain’. Kicked off by a robotic drum beat, the song explodes into a guitar-driven segue which is beautiful in its simplicity, but frighteningly good. Distorted, shaky, the song seems like it’ll collapse at any minute until Julian’ vocals come into the fray and carry the song into the verse and the chorus. When the song stops for a moment in the middle, you hold your breath. You can feel the momentum halt before the song rushes along again. Every song has a trick up its sleeve. From ‘Someday’’ hopefulness to ‘Trying Your Luck’’ frustration. From ‘Take It Or Leave It’’ rage to ‘New York City Cops’ playfulness, the album has it all.
After extensive touring and a few setbacks (the song ‘New York City Cops’ had to be replaced in light of 9/11), The Strokes were the talk of the Indie scene. They made leather jackets and Converse Sneakers fashionable again, never mind the countless impersonators who tried to make similar music but failed in some way. What held the impersonators back? The chemistry? The mixing? The lyrics?
It was the work ethic. Working 8 hours every day (regardless of how hectic their schedule was) to refine their music. The work they put in to secure gigs no one thought possible. The endless jamming. The relentless touring. It was all of this which led to The Strokes’ imminent downfall too. By 2003, the band was clearly flaming out. Their sophomore album (Room on Fire, 2003) was more of the same, but that wasn’t the issue. Substance abuse, intra-band tension and varying priorities, it was all a hot mess. By the time they released their third album (First Impressions of Earth, 2006), their hold on popular culture had noticeably died down. It was never quite the same after that, at least in public opinion. It’s different for me though.
‘Is This It’ changed the way I look at music. Yes, I still loved everything on the Top 40 charts. I still could listen to Justin Bieber and Taylor Swift. But why should I, when I could crank my headphones up and listen to 5 people go absolutely ham with their instruments? Not to mention the plethora of music I discovered from their influences. From Franz Ferdinand and Interpol to Radiohead and Queens of the Stone Age, most of my favourite artists are somehow tangentially related to them.
Not to mention how it felt as a 10-year-old to listen to people sing about how life is not black and white; about the grey area. That there are more than two things you can consider as answers. As a child, you’re preconditioned to have concrete opinions on things. To listen to people sing about how they don’t know what was going on at a primordial level was reassuring. I wasn’t alone. Conflict, confusion and lies were normal. No one tells you this, especially not in an Indian household. You learn it by yourself, and I learnt it off an album. I’ll never be grateful enough.
The Strokes are perhaps the most prominent band from the New York Garage Rock scene. Winning a Grammy for their most recent album has put them back into the limelight after a relatively low-key spell in the 2010s where they focused on their solo projects (check out The Voidz!). But now, they seem to be back and stronger than ever. There seems to be no animosity, no substance abuse problems and their latest album (The New Abnormal, 2020) was cautiously praised as a comeback. Sure, they’ll never be The Rolling Stones. But they’ll always remain my favourite band.
Written by Pratham
Image credits: Wikipedia
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