Single Review: The Strokes – Under Cover of Darkness
2011, and five years since their last album the saviours of rock n roll make a long awaited return with their new LP Angles and its lead single Under Cover of Darkness. Around a decade ago, The Strokes emerged as the shining light on the barren landscape of Rock music.
Indebted to critic’s darlings and fellow New Yorkers Velvet Underground and Television, their classic debut Is This It oozed NY cool and adolescent nonchalance. It boasted a uniform of strong catchy melodies performed with an effortless flair. This followed in quick succession with the more ambitious Room on Fire, with its sprawling riffs and structures, and greater diversity. Both were brilliant, exciting records and solidified The Strokes as the leading Rock and Roll group of the early noughties, a term perhaps understating their achievements.
Their third album, First Impressions of Earth was a more wayward affair with a feel of fatigue and ill-judged ideas, it fell well below the par of their preceding efforts. And so the honeymoon period was over, The Strokes retreated in to Rock purgatory, and fans were re-consigned to the bleak darkness of the pre-Strokes wilderness. So the new single arrives to a flood of expectation and hype, and the result is, predictably enough, an anti-climax.
Beginning with a familiar bouncing beat and jovial riff the track launches into its amiable verse progression, hints of their past yearning, that lulling chord drop so familiar; you almost get carried away. Ears pricked, you await the affecting release of the chorus you know so well; but it never comes. Rather, the track yields to a passable yet listless mid-section and chorus, and whether the reprising riff now sounds tasteless and desperate or is merely a relief, you can’t help feeling sold short.
It leaves a somewhat empty sensation not normally symptomatic with the band. Even First Impressions had the cracking You Only Live Once, which was a re-tread but a blistering one all the same. The thought dawns that that this seemingly benevolent high point of the preceding album may have been a signalling point of a downward trajectory. The new single is the same trick, but it falls hollow, struggling to support itself under the weight of its lacklustre anthemic bridges and chorus.
It feels obligatory, almost verging on self-parody. Repeated listens might induce a half-hearted sing along, a bob of the head, or better still, turning it off and putting Is This It on. And thus The Strokes conundrum becomes apparent: the spectacular brilliance of their early work will forever hinder any subsequent pleasant mediocrity from meeting the grade. It sounds like they’re not totally convinced themselves of where they want to go, as if they’re reluctant to recycle old formulas, but are forced to.
Julian Casablancas sounds as bored as you are; the ennui of Is This It without the conviction of feeling. He moans: ‘Everybody’s been singing the same song for ten years?’ and it’s either self-referential or ironic. The best bands grow up and evolve; we’re yet to see whether the strokes fit that category. In short: It’s no Reptilia, it’s no Last Night, it’s: ‘not bad’.
By Nathan Maisey
