album #49

angles (the strokes)

It's all right, it sounds different than The Strokes' more iconic sound, their lo-fi mid-aughts stuff. This album gleams a little more- it's almost as if they're reproducing the arc of music history, moving from the '70s garages into the later '70s disco-pop and the '80s clean synth sounds.

“Games” is a song I listen to over and over again, strictly because it opens with a fantastic minute of vintage synth disco-pop sound; “Gratisfaction” is pretty awesome, a glam-rock serenade straight out of early Bowie. And “Life Is Simple In The Moonlight” sounds a lot like Michael Jackson at the beginning- it draws you in with intro to “PYT,” eventually settling into a decent, minor key sagging sway (jolted awake every now and then by some ba-ba-bas.)

Overall, the album doesn't leave a strong impression but it's all right. It's an interesting story here- Casabalancas recorded his vocals separately and communicated with the rest of the band largely by email, and rather vaguely at that. So it makes sense that the album feels different than what came before- the rest of the band could take the lead (which Casablancas insisted on), so adherence to the formula, doing things the way they were done before, simply didn't follow.