Favorite Albums: 2000-200424. The Strokes, Is This ItOriginal position on my Stylus ballot: #25 Like with Gavin Rossdale and Bush, it’s a shame that the guy who writes all the great music is also in charge of the vocals (which band recorded a number called “Electricityscape” again?). Adding insult to injury, Julian Casablancas also has lady butt. So rather than dwell on how these entitled dillpickles were never built to Bring Rock Back in the first place, we should celebrate that Is This It has a lot more to offer than its spiritual predecessor Get The Knack, even if nothing here is quite so time capsule worthy as “My Sharona,” let alone “American Girl.” While there’s plenty of New York on this album, the quirk is that all the Television/Feelies business is refracted by later hipster signposts like New Order (compare “Barely Legal” to “Love Vigilantes”) to the point that no specific period in the post-Velvets era is directly recalled; everything that came after “What Goes On” is in here, assuming it can be replicated by guitar-bass-drums. Spilling out drone strums and caffeinated clatter, the band works up such a choppy froth that Julian’s relatively slack, Iggy-meets-Eeyore phrasing actually conveys some charisma. Unfortunately, the guy kept hollllding and hollering his notes as the music got grungier, rendering an increasingly anonymous group truly insufferable. Recent interviews suggest they don’t even know why they bother, and the Best New Wave Guitar Band crown got snatched away by the frikkin’ Frenchmen named Phoenix.

Favorite Albums: 2000-2004
24. The Strokes, Is This It
Original position on my Stylus ballot: #25

Like with Gavin Rossdale and Bush, it’s a shame that the guy who writes all the great music is also in charge of the vocals (which band recorded a number called “Electricityscape” again?). Adding insult to injury, Julian Casablancas also has lady butt. So rather than dwell on how these entitled dillpickles were never built to Bring Rock Back in the first place, we should celebrate that Is This It has a lot more to offer than its spiritual predecessor Get The Knack, even if nothing here is quite so time capsule worthy as “My Sharona,” let alone “American Girl.”

While there’s plenty of New York on this album, the quirk is that all the Television/Feelies business is refracted by later hipster signposts like New Order (compare “Barely Legal” to “Love Vigilantes”) to the point that no specific period in the post-Velvets era is directly recalled; everything that came after “What Goes On” is in here, assuming it can be replicated by guitar-bass-drums. Spilling out drone strums and caffeinated clatter, the band works up such a choppy froth that Julian’s relatively slack, Iggy-meets-Eeyore phrasing actually conveys some charisma. Unfortunately, the guy kept hollllding and hollering his notes as the music got grungier, rendering an increasingly anonymous group truly insufferable. Recent interviews suggest they don’t even know why they bother, and the Best New Wave Guitar Band crown got snatched away by the frikkin’ Frenchmen named Phoenix.