The Strokes - Angles Review

A decade ago, The Strokes saved Rock and Roll from the clutches of an unknown evil and have been on a steady downward spiral ever since. While I wasn't blown away by Is This It like NME or the rest of the universe was, I knew it had some notable tunes and was a fun record.

Two years later, The Strokes remixed and released the same album and called it Room on Fire. OK, that's not strictly true but the album, while praised at the time, lacked the same ambition as it's predecessor and showed no evolution between records. It didn't have as many tunes and a bit too much filler but the band were still in it's early days and many hoped for some real progression with the inevitable third album.

Three years later, First Impressions of Earth reared it's confused head, got an unjustified number one slot in the UK charts and was a record that, like Room on Fire, had a few notable excellent tracks (the first three) but far too much filler and went on for what seemed like a dog's age.

After this and touring non-stop for what seemed like an eternity (but what was actually just over five years), the band went on a fashionable hiatus and went on to pursue different projects. Then after much arguing and new creative directions, the band became whole again and here were are, a decade after Is This It with album number four; Angles.

Does it return the band to the wonder years of garage rock or have they continued the strange and bendy road of influences in prog rock?

Neither, they've embraced synthpop.

Like The King of Limbs, Angles has a lot in common with Jullian Casablancas' solo album Phrazes of the Young with it's synths and song structures. Of course it still retains the key elements of The Strokes (far more so than Radiohead's latest album) but the drive and ambition seems to have evaporated into something that has been released for the sake of being released.

The problem with the record is it lacks cohesion. The band revealed that their previous writing process was thrown out the window for Angles and it shows (and not in a good way). Casablancas lyrics sound like an after thought and the music sounds far too generic throughout. It's difficult to differentiate tracks like Games and You're So Right because they aren't memorable and once you've heard one of the tracks, you can rest assure you've heard them all.

Like it's predecessors, there's a few hints of something greater trying to emerge from the filler. Under Cover of Darkness is the best example of the band evolving but retaining the same spirit as their former selves.

Two Kinds of Happiness emerges immediately after; the music is rocky, the vocals are strangely quiet but then transform into a jumbled but strangely satisfying mess for the chorus and it's entertaining throughout.

The album really gets together by the end with Gratisfaction; a Thin Lizzy soundalike which shows the bands playful side (which takes far too long on a record which doesn't take itself too seriously).

Metabolism, like Under Cover of Darkness, shows us again the band can change and sound good doing it (with special credit to Casablancas for some truly great vocals). The album reaches a close with Life is Simple in the Moonlight, with bizarrely depressing lyrics and a lot more in common with songs off of First Impressions of Earth. It's a great closing track that really sticks out on the album.

But minus these little moments of fun; Angles is a thankfully short and generic album nowhere near waiting for five years. It's a strange (though heavily hinted) direction for a band that want to change but have no idea how to, but with a fanbase who simply want the glory days of the band who made being in a rock band fun reignited.

Only time will tell if The Strokes will go beyond the strange year of 2001 when their simplistic but memorable debut was the soundtrack of the indie kid. I just hope we don't have to wait another five years for something this disjointed and disappointing again.

5/10