More music more music, or, cool is dead, but baby don't you cry, it was time for cool to die.

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• bill says:

  March 30, 2011 at 10:05 am

  I liked that one song they did on that one album.

• Matt Miller says:

  March 30, 2011 at 10:14 am

  I don’t dis­like The Strokes, but bring­ing up their influ­ence on Franz Ferdinand in their defense is really just ask­ing for it…

• A different Brian says:

  March 30, 2011 at 10:35 am

  Lovely, you old rock­ist, but it was rather an unfair fight, what with your nat­ive English syn­tax and actu­al argu­ment. How he does­n’t just throw in tow­el after “post-grunge pos­tu­la­tion,” I don’t know.

• lipranzer says:

  March 30, 2011 at 12:32 pm

  Enjoyed your cogent argu­ment, Glenn, but I must say (1) yes, I still think the Yeah Yeah Yeahs mat­ter (or at least Karen O, as per her soundtrack to WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE), and (2) I do like the song of the Strokes Sofia Coppola used in SOMEWHERE.

• That Fuzzy Bastard says:

  March 30, 2011 at 12:48 pm

  What does it mean, at this point, for a band to “mat­ter”?

• Jimmy says:

  March 30, 2011 at 1:06 pm

  “Cause noth­in’ can change the Shape of Things to Come…”
  AIP…Chris Jones…Richard Pryor…Mann/Weill…Mike Curb…
  Coolsville.

• Jonathan W. says:

  March 30, 2011 at 2:30 pm

  If any­thing, the Strokes did serve as a well-publicized gate­way for young 00s music fans into a music­al land­scape more devoid of lum­ber­ing, moan­ing Creed hulks. Or at least into a world of pub­lic­a­tions where a lean­er band more inter­ested in an even super­fi­cial sur­vey of pop his­tory could become a big deal. Zwickel’s case is hurt by try­ing to point to spe­cif­ic bands (shoot me if he really believes Kings of Leon are saviors of any­thing) and try­ing to cater to the pos­sib­il­ity that their new album really REALLY (kinda) mat­ters, when – yeah – this stuff mostly registers as a music­al curio now in a big pop land­scape. But their music really did mat­ter once for select people of my age, as much for believ­ing its BS about cool­ness as for simple but brisk melodies.
  Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go back to the latest Michael Pisaro album.

• Frank McDevitt says:

  March 30, 2011 at 3:31 pm

  Well the Yeah Yeah Yeahs last album, “It’s Blitz!”, was kind of huge and won a ton of crit­ic­al acclaim, and it sold fairly well. It’s also really, really good. So you know, people still care about them. I’m a Strokes shoulder shrug­ger, but it’s silly (and a bit churl­ish) to trash on a suc­cess­ful band like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs just to make your point about the ques­tion­able rel­ev­ance of the Strokes.

• Zach says:

  March 30, 2011 at 4:19 pm

  Interesting debate, and well argued Glenn, although for me it’s mostly irrel­ev­ant to my enjoy­ment of the music. I’m a Strokes par­tis­an, and I think their new album is sol­id as hell, but I’m not nearly as inter­ested in ration­al­iz­ing that view as I would be about any giv­en film I admired. To me, good pop songs are magic­al; a three minute excur­sion into bliss, but they are also her­met­ic­ally closed in a way few oth­er art forms are, and explic­at­ing what makes them great has always seemed a fool’s errand. (I also don’t pay much atten­tion to lyr­ics, which I’m told makes me some­thing of a weirdo, but to me, lyr­ics are import­ant only inso­far as they aug­ment the rhythm and melody of the song. Bob Dylan is great, but half the time I don’t care what he’s singing – what’s excit­ing is the melody and the tex­ture of his voice.)
  So for me, it’s about the sound of the songs, and ANGLES has some killer songs. Glenn, a big part of your prob­lem with the Strokes seems to stem from Casablancas rub­bing you the wrong way. I under­stand that, but I think you’re tak­ing him too ser­i­ously – the douchi­ness he exudes just nev­er bothered me. I think it’s kind of an inter­est­ing com­bin­a­tion of actu­al irrit­ab­il­ity and hav­ing fun with the whole rock­star aloof­ness thing. For me, he writes and sings (mostly) well, and that’s what’s important.
  ‑For the record, and I know this might grate on cer­tain folks, but I don’t see Casablanca’s per­sona as any more silly and thin than Lou Reed’s was in his prime.

• Chris O. says:

  March 30, 2011 at 9:08 pm

  I liked Casablancas’ solo single “Out of the Blue” bet­ter than any­thing I’ve heard off the new album, thus far.
  Fun read, though. I hope more like it is forthcoming.

• Mr. Ziffel says:

  March 30, 2011 at 10:55 pm

  Jack White kicks Casablancas’ ass.

• Scott says:

  March 31, 2011 at 3:41 pm

  Fun dis­cus­sion! I like The Strokes, though I haven’t listened to them in a while, and haven’t heard any of the new record, so I don’t have much to add. I will men­tion, though, that I’m a big fan of Albert Hammond Jr.‘s “Yours to Keep”, which I think is a great pop album.
  Anyway, this is off-topic, but in keep­ing with the music theme, it feels appro­pri­ate. I just this morn­ing fin­ished Jennifer Egan’s book, “A Visit from the Goon Squad”. Has any­one here read it? It recently came out in paper­back, but it was argu­ably the most acclaimed American nov­el of 2010. It’s tre­mend­ously good, and a book that would def­in­itely appeal to people in the music industry (or music lov­ers in gen­er­al), since it’s largely set in that world. I seem to remem­ber hav­ing an inter­est­ing dis­cus­sion about Jonathan Franzen’s “Freedom” here on Glenn’s blog a while ago. Anyone who liked “Freedom” would do well to pick up Egan’s book, which I feel is quite sim­il­ar in theme, scope and ambi­tion, but which pulls it all off a lot more suc­cess­fully (and mov­ingly), if you ask me.

• James Keepnews says:

  March 31, 2011 at 5:43 pm

  Jimmy – And Hal Holbrook. And Shelley Winters (I’d say she finally jumps the har­rid­an shark with this pic­ture, jump­ing back only with NEXT STOP, GREENWICH VILLAGE and, to my delight, THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY, for which I oth­er­wise ain’t got much truck). AND, c’mon, Will Robinson him­self, Billy Mumy!!! I know, you thought I was going to say Joe Strummer…

• James Keepnews says:

  March 31, 2011 at 5:49 pm

  Oh, and more on top­ic, I believe it was Jimmy Johnson in the late, lamen­ted, Forced Exposure – the best magazine in the world, prob­ably the best magazine that ever was – who, in sum­ming up a review of a release whose par­tic­u­lars I can no longer recall, expressed my pre­cise feel­ings regard­ing The Strokes: Please fuck them.

• Steve Pick says:

  April 4, 2011 at 8:05 pm

  Fascinating dis­cus­sion, but truly weird – you’re arguing from a stand­point of his­tor­ic­al know­ledge and attempts at under­stand­ing what’s going on; he’s arguing from a stand­point of how much it fits his per­son­al iden­tity, thus con­nect­ing his taste with some cul­tur­al rel­ev­ance that hon­estly, I can­’t fig­ure out in an age where every single per­son has to trum­pet their own indi­vidu­al taste über alles. Do the Strokes ape New York rock tropes of the past without quite achiev­ing some­thing big­ger? Who cares? They have hooks with­in hooks, whatever that means.
  Two things – as much as I love you writ­ing about film, music cri­ti­cism needs your voice des­per­ately these days. And secondly, the Casablancas solo album really did prick up my ears more than any­thing the Strokes have ever done. Inconsequential, prob­ably, but not monu­ment­ally so.

• eric puls says:

  April 5, 2011 at 12:41 am

  Real ho-hum cage match. Look, the Strokes’ best record is “Room On Fire”. It’s an unstop­pable hook­fest made up of songs played with velo­city and brio and sung with attract­ive dégagé. To my ears it always had more in com­mon with “Candy‑O” than with “Transformer” or “Adventure”. The latest record is pretty darn good too, maybe a little thin in spots, but still an abso­lute riot of hooks.
  I’ll always remem­ber them scrunched togeth­er on the Empty Bottle stage, open­ing for GBV, Hammond’s left hand a blur, Jules wild-eyed vox, the pis­ton beats, the get fucked atti­tude, and a string of pop/punk gems, one fast after the oth­er, that built to an aston­ish­ing cli­max. “We’re the Strokes from New York City,” and off they stalked. Greatness was fois­ted upon them because they were great. We had no oth­er option.