Five years in the making and the waiting (and for a lot of us the wait was agonising) we now have the first piece of new music from The Strokes’ newly-announced and hopefully-awesome new album “Angles”.
Unfortunately, on first listen, it kinda sucks.
I saw The Strokes at the Reading festival in England back in 2001 just as the hype surrounding them was reaching its height. They were everywhere, not only in the musical press but the mainstream media too; TV shows, news shows, newspapers, smoke signals, and planes trailing blown up pictures of their faces across the sky. They were initially scheduled to be playing on The Radio One Evening Stage under a tent, but due to the amount of buzz surrounding them there were thousands upon thousands of people trying to cram their wee bodies underneath this fairly small canopy that they moved them to the main stage.
When they made the announcement it’d been moved everyone legged it to the main stage and tried to push their way as close to the front as possible. I managed to get about halfway in, right in the middle and the atmosphere was intense before they even got onto the stage. People were already singing their songs and chanting “Strokes! Strokes!” until they walked on as pandemonium ensued; everyone singing every word back at them (and the album hadn’t even been released yet).
Maybe it was the hype, maybe it was the attitude, maybe it was their chic New York style, maybe it was the atmosphere, maybe it was the music, or maybe it was all of the above that made that show so special. It’s rare to be part of something huge like that, watching a band live amongst so much buzz and for them to deliver on that buzz, you could tell they were going to be big. When I got home all I wanted to do was listen to the album but I didn’t have any money until the week after, but when I finally got my hands on the CD the Monday after I got paid, it blew me away.
“New York City Cops” was one of the strongest tracks on “Is This It” but that song took on a completely different meaning less than 24 hours after I got the album; I was laying on my bed the next afternoon listening to the radio when I heard about a plane crashing into a building in New York…
“Under Cover Of Darkness” is the first single from “Angles” due out March 22nd. It’s a radio rip since their site is down, (updated with the official MP3) but at least you get to hear.
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