| · Cue "The difficult second album" intro theme music (duhn-duhn-DUHNNNNNNN).
It must be rough to suddenly become one of the biggest bands in the world with just one album's worth of songs at your disposal. Besides the unbearable routine of playing the same damned set every single night for up to two years (Interpol, I’m looking at you), there's the backlash that is surely on the way (we quickly learn to hate what we once loved, especially once you start hearing it in malls). Worst of all, there's the mountain-sized challenge of coming up with an even better second act.
The Strokes may have hit the nail on the head by titling their debut Is This It, but they still managed to pack in a clutch of great, simple hooks that just wouldn't come out, even with repeat washings. For Room On Fire (see chapters: Most eagerly awaited album of the year, Born from troubled recording sessions, Sure to be arse, etc.), they've decided to take perhaps the least expected step of all – rewriting essentially the exact same record and sprucing it up with dark and moody cover art, giving us ample affirmation that they really mean it, man.
It's all here – Julian Casablancas's scratchy vocals, the fuzzy two-chord guitars, the tin-pot drums – and in just over half-an-hour running time, there are a few great moments that make the wait at least somewhat worthwhile. "What Ever Happened?" and "Reptilia" (put right up at the beginning so you don't even have to reach for the fast forward button) are certainly their two best bits yet, while "Under Control" and "Between Love & Hate" slow the tempo down a touch making them suitable lighter-raising slow dances.
Still, Room Of Fire raises the question of what it is exactly that makes The Strokes stick out above the rest. There's no particular character to anything they do – none of this lot are particularly adept at their chosen instruments, they're just "the other guys in The Strokes" (Really, you'll never hear someone exclaim, "man, that's a wicked one-note bass line, Nikolai Fraiture, or whatever your name is!"). Casablancas still ain't much of a lyricist ’cause he aint got much to say (when he opens the album shouting "I wanna be forgotten," I don't believe him for a second – just give it another couple of years fella, and we'll see how much you dig obscurity).
Even "12:51," the lead-off single, just kind of happens and fades away down the drain like nothing.
Back in the ’60s, chaps like The Beatles and The Kinks were pumping out full-length albums two, even three times a year. While it's easy to excuse the sameness between records inherent in such a rushed schedule, some changes over the two-year birthing period of Room On Fire would have been nice.
I suggest we just rephrase their title and let it go. The Strokes: The Most OK Band In The World.
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