So, naturally when I saw all the cool dudes writing blogs I decided I should probably take a stab at it too, only thing is, I couldn't be less interested in writing about vidja games. However, I do like talking to dudes about music and finding and recommending new music or bands people might have missed, so lets talk about that y'dig? I'll start off safe, with a band that chances are, you might have heard of.
For those of you who somehow completely fucking ignored it at the time, during the early 2000's there was an explosion of amazing bands that came through and like Nirvana before them made the entire last generation seem completely obsolete and like pussy fairground rides. If you missed this era you were probably still listening to the same bands that becamepointless, your own fault. The three bands that received the most public attention were The Strokes, The Hives and The White Stripes but I never liked the Hives that much so lets just quietly skip past them. Instead lets look at The Strokes, most importantly this album:
Yo so this is pretty much the coolest album of all time, lets get that out of the way first. The front cover is cool, the music sounds cool, the band are the coolest looking band of all time without having to dress like niche prostitutes. It's pretty much the perfect example of a record being released at the right time with the right sound. If you ever saw the Strokes on TV you knew what you were in for, to me as a British kid they were like the physical embodiment of how cool New York sounded. Julian Casablancas had this weird filter over his voice that made him sound at points like he was gonna shank you. All that said though the album didn't just ride on the wave of public hysteria, it wouldn't be as legendary as it is today if it didn't have some great fucking songs on there. My personal favourite being New York City Cops, probably because of this performance of it that was as close as you could get to summing up all of 2002.
Is This It formed the template that all the big guitar bands of the next few years would follow, particularly British indie bands like The Libertines and Arctic Monkeys which formed their own massive scene here in the UK but if I were to start talking about that I would literally never stop so just know that it was fucking biiiiiiiig and not everyone liked it.
After that The Strokes kept going strong. They released their second album Room On Fire in 2004 and their third effort First Impression's Of Earth in 2006. Both were very well regarded critically but neither had the same effect on the musical landscape. They took a break for a few years and all went off and meddled in various side projects, none of them were terrible but the only ones really worth checking out are bassist Nikolai's side project Nickel Eye (heh) and singer Julian Casablancas' solo album. Mainly because this song is laugh out loud funny.They reunited last year for a few shows and then released their newest album Angles earlier this year. The album itself was kind of good but more importantly it introduced them to a newer generation and in the process somewhat rejuvenated them. Seriously go look up a couple of their concerts from this year, they actually look like they're having fun.
So the future for the Strokes seems bright enough right now, they're apparently working on album five which will if all goes well and they learn from the past year probably actually be quite good, again hopefully. Thank's for reading if you could be arsed to get this far, I'm terrible at judging my own writing so as far as I can tell this might just be incessant rambling. Thanks to Bruce for giving me some inspiration with his musical writingnessness and Sweep for uh...Something.
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