(Rough Trade)
With the Middle East currently witnessing a bloody spring uprising, now isn't perhaps the best time to question the value of democracy. But ever since guitars have been plugged into amplifiers, the musical debate has raged over whether dictatorship or democracy makes for better tunes. Surveying the four-album career of the Strokes ? the New York band who mob-handedly saved rock music a decade ago ? it seems an open-and-shut case. Dictatorship works. Democracy leaves something to be desired.
The Strokes's fourth album isn't their worst record ? that accolade goes to its predecessor, 2006's intricate, proggy First Impressions of Earth. But Angles is audibly affected by its long and troubled gestation, and its multiple authors missing the wood for the trees. Recording sessions with one producer, Joe Chiccarelli, were scrapped. Having reconvened the band at guitarist Albert Hammond Jr's studio, the other Strokes recorded their parts while singer Julian Casablancas ? the band's truculent, unelected leader ? toured his solo album.
That record ? 2009's confident, neon-lit Phrazes For the Young ? sounded exactly like what it was: a Strokes album in exile, made not by the coolest gang in town, but by their machine replacements. Angles, too, sounds like what it is ? a decent enough group effort, in which Casablancas is not fully invested. It doesn't take a conflict analyst to grasp that Casablancas has ceded significant creative control to his band mates in the interest of keeping the Strokes intact.
Does Angles sound all that compromised, all that miserable? Not exactly. Its finest three minutes and 46 seconds is all joy. "Two Kinds Of Happiness" finds the Cars and Blondie (the less-acknowledged Strokes influences, beyond Televison and the Velvet Underground) getting it on, while the two-guitar matrix of Nick Valensi and Albert Hammond Jr gives off crackling electricity.
The curveballs are good fun, too. Both "You're So Right" and "Games" sound as though they would have fitted right in on Casablancas's Phrazes For the Young. They provide what Angles otherwise lacks ? a pithy reupholstering of the Strokes's signature sound; a way forward. "Gratisfaction" is downright silly, a glam tumble along the lines of Thin Lizzy.
But too many unmemorable songs here struggle to define themselves, much less redefine the Strokes. The detail is lush, the twists can be clever ("Machu Picchu" nods to the Strokes's heirs Vampire Weekend). But "Under Cover of Darkness" ? a pastiche of the Strokes's old sound, delivered with wry amusement ? proves that they just cannot continue as they were.
Contrast all this with the band's stellar 2001 debut, Is This It and its follow-up, the almost-as-good Room on Fire. Both were largely conceived and executed under the genial dictatorship of Casablancas. But by album three, the Strokes's caffeinated puppy brio was gone, hostage to hedonism and infighting.
Perhaps all bands run their course. Recently, the Strokes's fellow travellers in the early 21st century garage-rock boom, the White Stripes, shut up shop. The solution for the Strokes needn't be so drastic. A return to benevolent despotism might suffice.
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