Only CDs Is Sounding Like These # 13: The Strokes, Is This It (2001)

A new occasional series - CDs are coming back baby! And I’m here for it. BIGTIME! Also, some albums just REALLY suit the format, right

When it comes down to it I only ever cared about one album by The Strokes. And Is This It? Why, yes it is. This Is It. Indeed. I mean, the second album was a good rinse/repeat with just enough variation to keep us mildly interested, and I went in for a few extra listens, because they came and played a show here and did a pretty much 50/50 split between the two albums and it was a fun show, and all of the songs were great to hear live.

But I always thought the point of The Strokes was that they were a one-album wonder. It would have made way more sense.

I got up to five albums by them -

I even reviewed Comedown Machine — their fifth (see above). And it was okay, from memory, like probably the next best after the debut. But I just couldn’t care. People tell me that various solo albums by some of the guys, and other albums by the band are great; people talk return to form and comeback. And I just don’t get it. But I’ve always hoped that Is This It would stand up.

And not just because I had a lot invested in it when it arrived — mostly just because it was a fun blast of nostalgia then, and so why can’t it also be now.

You see, when this album was released in 2001 I went all in and straight away. I bought a copy as soon as I could — I had not heard a thing from it, at least I don’t remember so. But I do remember reading advance-hype. This was when reviews were huge in my life. The biggest point. I was learning to become a reviewer, and so I was reading whatever I could find, just absorbing huge amounts of information in this way; taking on as much as I could.

I bought Is This It as soon as I was able to do so — and loved it straight away. It sounded like Iggy Pop and Television and had some Velvet Underground guitar tones and all this posturing from and of New York. And then the twin towers came down and the New York City Cops song was removed from the album. The cover changed too. Couldn’t have that glove (I always thought of Spinal Tap and the “smell the glove” riff).

The Strokes wrote a bunch of massively catching rip-off pop songs. Just like Oasis did a half decade before them on the other side of the ocean.

And it worked for The Strokes. And it worked for me. I rushed home with a spindle of blank CDs too and copied the album for several friends. I remember making a copy for my writer friend who would visit me late at night because I was the only one keeping the same hours as her. We’d bond over movies and music and we’re still doing that, and still trying to work out who we are, though way more comfortable at it now, given we’ve been married for nearly 20 years.

But 23 years ago when we were listening to The Strokes a lot, we weren’t even quite an item. It wasn’t far off though. She’ll be gutted if she knows that I’m about to share that when the towers were felled we woke up and wondered what the big news was — she strolled over the road to get a newspaper, came back eating a bag of jet planes and then as she read the front page said, “oh, these are probably in pretty poor taste!” But decided to continue eating from the bag of lollies anyway. It’s a good thing she lives with all of this (ie me), so doesn’t need to read any of the loose ravings and ramblings I somewhat collect and broadly shape. (So I reckon I can sneak that one over the line).

I’m mentioning it because I always think about it when I hear this album.

And I think about that time in my life. It’s funny because The Strokes was nostalgia music when it was released, now it’s double-nostalgia music; we think back on the times when we were first listening to it as self-consciously ‘fake cover version’ music. Now we think back on those times.

The Strokes sits with Nirvana and Oasis and Pearl Jam and Beck and a few other things now for me — music I loved but can’t listen to a lot these days. Smashing Pumpkins, Supergrass, Blur, Radiohead. There are others…

But The Strokes was also out on its own for reasons discussed — it was the Wax Museum of music already, first time around. There were just enough hooks for you to hang your coat on while you drank in the grotesqueries.

I found this copy recently. With the cover. With NYC Cops still on there. I’m glad to have it. I owned the album for a while on vinyl — but it was never meant to be a record. It was always meant to be a CD. I can’t explain it beyond that. And don’t need to. I’m meaning of course that I remember it so fondly as not just a CD but the one that I copied over and again for various friends. And for the person I now share my life with — back then seperate lives, separate CD collections. Now it’s all just one big mess. Life and CDs and everything else. Wonderfully so.

And The Strokes still sounds very good. Once or twice or three times a year. And now maybe more…