Album Review: The Strokes - Angles

When the Beta Band deemed their self-titled debut album proper “fucking awful” upon its release 12 years ago, most fans knew such defeatist talk should be taken with a very large grain of salt. I mean here was a band that routinely tried to piss off their bosses, blowing advances on luxuries such as £4,000 Velcro suits with letters that could be arranged to read anything from "Beta" to "Iraq." Miserable recording experiences, likewise, needn’t always alert panic. Fleetwood Mac may have had a far closer relationship with their busy cocaine dealer than each other in the mid 70s but they still managed a masterpiece in Rumours. Members of Big Star physically fought each other around the same time and Yeah Yeah Yeahs left their studio barely on speaking terms 30 years later but Radio City and Show Your Bones merit the same revered status in these reviewer’s eyes. Yet when The Strokes admit to having had problems in the studio and not be particularly enthusiastic about the results just one album after the first major misstep of their up ‘til then blistering career, it may be time to get worried.

That concern is almost entirely borne out on Angles, the bewilderingly uneven, five-years-in-the-waiting successor to the overblown and underwhelming First Impressions Of Earth. While the New Yorkers’ third album went where no Strokes album should ever go: significantly over the 35 minute mark, their fourth comes in at an encouraging 34 minutes and 43 seconds. So far so good then. Opener ‘Machu Picchu’ too offers hope by brilliantly combining the band’s solo work and side projects from the intervening years with what came before. There’s a touch of the needly guitars that were littered throughout Julian Casablancas’ Phrazes Of The Young, a little of Little Joy’s partiality towards reggae but the whole thing explodes into life once Nick Valensi and Albert Hammond Jr’s guitars enter the fray. The pair’s paw marks are all over single ‘Under Cover Of Darkness’ as well, which along with ‘Taken For A Fool’ five tracks in, are the most “Strokes” sounding of songs here.

Yet things start to unravel very quickly. Indeed it takes just three tracks for traces of a rot setting in when the spacey ‘You’re So Right’ comes off like a castoff  from the Phrazes Of The Young sessions, with some neat echoed vocals unable to save the day. And while ‘Two Kinds Of Happiness’ foray into new wave territory is saved somewhat by a killer guitar hook, the same can’t be said for the chillwavey ‘Games’. Frankly they should leave that shit to Twin Shadow. The second half of the album is seriously forgettable and continues to swing wildly between styles. Once the clearly disjointed five-piece start to sound like a bad Steely Dan (the DREADFUL ‘Gratisfacation’), you have to ask yourself whether this is the same band that recorded Is This It?

It’s not. Their classic debut may sound as fresh today as it did when it turned indie music on its head a decade ago, but The Strokes have aged very badly. Whereas First Impressions at least went in a certain direction, albeit the wrong one after the band railed against unfair criticism that Room On Fire was “too Strokes”, they are all over the shop on Angles and it makes for generally painful listening. It’s no surprise that Valensi described the fractured recording process - Casablancas practically phoned in his vocals - as “awful– just awful.” He went on to tell Pitchfork in the same interview that “the best thing we can do right now is put out another [album] really quick,” a statement that led another web heavy hitter Stereogum to ask the very valid question: What’s the point in keeping the Strokes going? On this evidence, it may be time to call it a day before any further damage is done.