Is This It (album) by The Strokes

From Timestarter 3 days ago

Fav. Tracks: Someday, Last Nite.

Great album!

Amazing album!

The best debut album since the Stone Roses, and songs like Hard To Explain and The Modern Age would figure in the very best tracks of the noughties.

Good album really hyped for the new Strokes coming out this year!

SO much fun. At its core, it's the constant strumming that elevates this to a total win (and a Velvet Underground worthy imitator)

I’ve hesitated to review this until now. Like most of my favorite albums, this one had to grow on me, for 18 years to be exact. I felt like it lacked the immediacy of most great rock albums, that it needed more hooks and stronger payoffs instead of ending abruptly on certain songs. I remember reading an article about some industry executives who felt ‘Is This It’ should have been an even bigger album, that the songs never reached the heights of their potential. They used the template from the songs here and helped co-write ‘Since You Been Gone’ by Kelly Clarkson, demonstrating what they felt was the direction The Strokes songs were building to, but with bigger hooks. And I tended to agree with that sentiment for a long time, that these songs were good but never built up to a large payoff. Until one day, I was driving my old truck (as opposed to a newer Bluetooth enabled company vehicle) where I had no Spotify, no streaming service to speak of, just my old CD binder and the music of my youth. I was reminded of being in my friend’s basement, smoking weed and riding skateboards with our high school buddies, listening to The Strokes and desperately wanting to ‘get’ them the way they did. But it still didn’t click. It was good, yes, but that was all. It was historically important, I never argued that. But I never loved it. Fast forward a few weeks, and the album stayed in my CD player. I only drive that old truck on weekends, and somewhere along the way I misplaced the binder. So I have a choice: listen to this, the only album in my CD player, or the radio. I continued playing this album. And over time, I noticed my son nodding along to the songs, asking me each time he got in my truck who we were listening to, and commenting that they sound like The Beatles (he’s 3, he gets a pass). And in these moments, in a shared a experience, the songs started revealing themselves to me. I appreciated that the songs didn’t contain soaring choruses (with the exception of the perfect ‘Hard to Explain’) and instead relied on actual songwriting and musicianship to establish its brilliance. With all due respect to the poster below me, I feel it’s one of those rare albums that is anachronistic without being derivative. It could have been recorded in 1970 or today, and would have found an audience any time in between. It took me much longer than most to understand this album, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t appreciate it a little more for that reason.

97/100

From NJ 08/10/2019 20:54

It's not a particularly new or revolutionary album; it's quite derivative, in fact. However, it's perhaps the most perfect album I've listened to. All the songs are simply great, and all the band members work together so well. It's simply a great listen, and proves sometimes the sum of future parts matters as much as the whole.

100/100

This album is the reason why so many bands of the 2000's sound the S-A-M-E !!!!!

Favorite Tracks:Barely Legal