Released April 10, 2020
7 / 10
Favorites
The Adults Are Talking, Bad Decisions, At The Door, Ode To The Mets
Least favorites
Brooklyn Bridge To Chorus, Why Are Sundays So Depressing
The Strokes are finally back with their sixth album, seven long years after "Comedown Machine". Each member of the band has kept busy in the meantime with their fair share of side projects and they had reportedly started working on "The New Abnormal" as early as 2016. Rick Rubin's production style, known for its tendency to strip down song and amplifying the remains (a compression-amplification of sorts), is all over the album, with perky drums, bright vocals and snappy guitars. This time around the band departs from the expected garage rock tinged with 80s synth and electronica elements by exposing more of a new wave sound, complete with electro pop and disco-infused post-punk ventures. The result is fresh, painstakingly relevant, while at the same time reminiscent of the end of the party the band has been particularly adept at evoking for the past two decades. "The New Abnormal" sees the band branching out from their earlier sounds without completely cutting ties with their past. From the opening of the album, The Strokes want you to know they haven't forgotten all that was said of them. The Adults Are Talking starts with a reference to comments the band faced at the dawn of their career: their privileged background didn't play well with proper rock etiquette in the eyes of many. They faced a lot of scrutiny as their debut took off; when asked what he thought people misunderstood most about the band back in 2002, drummer Fabrizio Moretti answered in part: "That we’re in this for anything other than the music. That we’re fashionistas. That we’re rich boys trying to steal the spotlight from someone else. When you try a hard as you can to just be yourself and make music, people like to start making things up." The music on this intro track pops, the snare drums shimmer and the chord progression has The Strokes woven all through it - with a chorus that strikingly starts off as the perfect Strokes' motif. Casablancas' voice is almost muffled, and carries his nonchalant signature: the track was meant to be devoured by the fans. But there's also a thread of slight resentment towards feeling compelled to meet expectations throughout the record - would it really be a Strokes album without it? Bad Decisions, the band's re-imagination of Billy Idol's "Dancing With Myself" (down to giving him a writing credit), toys with the idea of disappointing the fans. The song could very well be open to interpretation but the selling point has to be the lines "Pick up your gun / Put up those gloves" likely referencing items prominently featured on the covers of the band's first two albums - widely considered as The Strokes' most significant work to date. Accordingly, the song is particularly nostalgic, but also energetic thanks to strong percussions. Casablancas plays with his voice much more than could be expected of him, on par with the unstoppable composition. There is something to say of the band's decision to put forward their steps in a new musical direction as they chose to introduce the album with At The Door as the record's first single. Perhaps the strongest tie the track has with The Strokes' discography is its impulse to counterpoint at every turn. Whenever one would usually write one melodic line, The Strokes write five and end up interlocking three of them. The track was premiered at a Bernie Sanders' New Hampshire political rally in February 2020 with an uncanny urgency and alarming pessimistic outlook. The melody has a restlessness to it, starting off menacingly until the chorus bursts with light and lets iridescent angelic background vocals shine through. Notably, the track doesn't feature any drums, relying nearly exclusively on the intense synthesizer and , progressively, a plethora of electronic effects to create an extraterrestrial ambiance. The track ends with a sound excitingly new for the band before bringing the listener into orbit. A really stellar feat for The Strokes. The band, and frontman Julian Casablancas especially, have not recoiled from expressing their opinions in politics and the state of the world both in interviews and in their music. Unsurprisingly, The Adults Are Talking takes on a rebellious tone with jabs at the establishment and the failures of capitalism to reconcile success and morals. It also alludes to virtual disinformation campaigns and the immediacy of news in an effort to explain that "The New Abnormal" is not just music for the sake of music. Still and all, Eternal Summer is a bit more secure with its message - though it showcases less musical flair. I was taken aback by Casablancas' superb falsetto on the opening verse and the impeccable exchange between his different registers, all set on a backdrop of 80s synths. The march is a slow burn before it transforms into a punky rasp on the chorus. The frustration is audible, warning of an incoming catastrophe ("This is the eleventh hour") that the people in power are choosing to ignore ("They got the remedy / But they won't let it happen"). The change of mood as the chorus takes over feels a bit schizophrenic - it feels like the track has been intruded upon, and then the instrumental picks up where it left off as if nothing happened... puzzling. One of the nicer parts of the song is the reverberating falsetto right before the second chorus, lulling the listener with false securities in a hypnotic fashion. Eternal Summer is definitely an acquired taste, neither lip-smackingly good nor achingly bad. It seems that the band has healed from a decade of strenuous relations, sounding more adventurous - on their own terms - than on their previous opus. Casablancas sounds less braggadocious and dismissive than before, even apologetic at times. Despite the vocal and musical nonchalance that can at times make everything sound less grave, shrugging off the pain and remorse heard throughout "The New Abnormal" effortlessly, there are a couple moments where emotions escape confinement. Casablancas has become an adept of fleeting emotional display; whereas he once seemed to abhor them, he will now give in from time and time - baby steps. In Selfless, he beckons for a lover to return to glistening cymbals. The song goes through an adroit passages as Casablancas' vocals morph into electric guitar at the end of the chorus - taking me a second to realize the voice was now the instrument. On this track, his romanticism is not entirely convincing, despite lyrics that feel personal ("You're mucking off, but I will live for you, my selfless love"). The voice is a bit all over the place, the second verse bursts out of nowhere with as much emotion as a foreign language teacher repeating "I love you"s to their pupils. He makes for a better communicator on Not The Same Anymore, acknowledging his failure to change in time to salvage the relationships he ruined ("And now it's time to show up / Late again, I can't grow up / And now it's on me, they've given up"). The slow processional of a song is a bit overdrawn in my opinion but I'll forgive some of its fault for the brilliance of that single line: "You'd make a better window than a door" - by the way, count the number of mentions of "doors" throughout "The New Abnormal", you'd be surprised. Still, the emotional peak of the record comes with closer Ode To The Mets. The track opens with a stereo dissension: a pulsating beat comes stronger on one side and chords on the other, clashing melodies briefly. The whole arrangement has a life of its own, breathing in and out in a drowsy haze. The chorus is a heart-wrenching surprise, in which Casablancas musters power and - yes I daresay - emotion. The album ends on a note of melancholia wrapped up in an urgency that coerced Casablancas in being more expressive. Now that we got the band's frontman on his knees shouting for our lives, isn't it time to remove the headphones and listen, listen more closely than ever, to the thousands of muffled voices that might not make it through this dark time?
Favorite lyrics
"Gone now are the old times Forgotten, time to hold on the railing The Rubik's Cube isn't solving for us Old friends, long forgotten The old ways at the bottom of The ocean now has swallowed The only thing that's left is us So pardon the silence that you're hearing It's turnin' into a deafening, painful, shameful roar"
Ode To The Mets
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