The Strokes- The New Abnormal

Sometimes it can be dangerous to look at things you liked from your past.  It sometimes turns out that what you loved about them so much is gone, or was never there from the beginning. I tend to have pretty nostalgic feelings about music, but really listening to what’s there, then looking inside myself to see if I still like it is a process that meant to take that nostalgia away. The results can be unsettling.

Enter The Strokes. They were one of my favorite bands in high school. I listened to Room On Fire and Is This It on pretty heavy rotation. All my friends liked The Strokes. They played instruments so I got to sing some of their songs on stage. Fast forward to a couple days ago, I still considered Room On Fire one of my favorite albums.

Then I was asked to review The New Abnormal, The Strokes’ latest release after a seven year hiatus. I really didn’t want to, but I felt I had to because of the person who asked. So I listened to the album. And I didn’t like it. After a while I just didn’t care about what was going on. The parts that sounded like The Strokes I knew were few and far between, and the other parts sounded good, just not engaging, or worse, they sounded like other people.

Not caring is a problem on my part, a character flaw or lack of discipline. As a music critic, albeit an amateur one, I need to be able to set aside that sort of thing. But I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why I didn’t care. That is until I sat down to write this review, and realized I might never have cared. I might have only cared because other people cared.

That would explain why Room On Fire was one of my favorite albums, but I never listened to it, why I was reticent to play The Strokes in the car. Something about the music, just didn’t hit home for me. Maybe it was the lyrical content, that seems obsessed with relationships and nothing else. That is, when you can understand it. (I still think “The room is on fire/ She’s fixing her hair” is a brilliant line) Or maybe that techno, sharp sound didn’t have enough soul. By that I mean there was nothing human to gravitate towards. It might just come down to the fact that I don’t find the Strokes’ sound very interesting, and they aren’t giving me much incentive to look and make sure.

I feel like a liar, some kind of fraud. What kind of person am I to have lied, albeit unintentionally, about what they liked just to please people? Worse, what kind of music critic can I be if I don’t care about the The Strokes? Opinions change incrementally. The only way they can blind side you is if you didn’t realize them yourself.

3/5 If you’re a Strokes’ fan check this out, see what you think. The worst that could happen is that you think it’s okay. As for everyone else, you can skip this one.