New Strokes

I’m hearing good things about the next album, due April 10. I lost interest in The Strokes after First Impressions of Earth (2006?!), but I’d be hard-pressed to find a better debut album than Is This It.

Here’s a video for one of the new singles, “Bad Decisions.” If it sounds a lot like “Dancing With Myself,” it’s no accident. The band allegedly gave Billy Idol and Tony James songwriting credits to avoid litigation.

As near as I can tell, the message in the video is that The Strokes will be evolving musically, so if you want rehashed older albums (clones), too bad. Oh, and the band members’ faces are deepfaked onto actors playing the clones. Timely!

4 Replies to “New Strokes”

  1. I hated the “I’m cool and I sing through my Peavey amp” affectation of early Strokes, and have paid them no attention since.

    I kind of like this video though.

    1. I liked that first album a lot the first few times I heard it, but Monkeystador zeroes in on what was wrong with them. They were a little too glamorously hip for their own good (I remember hearing someone refer to them as The Backstreet Boys of indie rock). But that’s an extra-musical concern; the songs were mostly good. As I listened to it more, I started getting annoyed with that singing-through-an-overdriven-miniamp effect. What was the reason for it? I guess it fit their overall sound, but was it necessary to use it ALL the time? Made me wonder if he was just trying to hide a vocal defect. Sounds like he’s still using it in that new song, although he’s toned it down a bit.

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