Best Albums !: The Strokes

Showing posts with label The Strokes. Show all posts

04 April, 2008

The Strokes. First Impressions of Earth (2006)

First Impressions of Earth is the third album by the American rock band The Strokes. It was released in January 2006, having been preceded by lead hit single "Juicebox" some weeks earlier. It is also the first album by The Strokes to have a Parental Advisory Label.

The album was recorded over a ten-month period. The Strokes initially set out to record it with Gordon Raphael, the producer of their first two albums. Later on, guitarist Albert Hammond, Jr. introduced them to Grammy-winning producer David Kahne (Tony Bennett, Sublime, Paul McCartney), who stepped in to collaborate with Raphael. However, the collaboration was not working out and so Raphael stepped down. As a result, the majority of the album was produced by Kahne.

First Impressions of Earth is widely seen as an expansion beyond The Strokes' first two albums, Is This It and Room on Fire. The album received mixed reviews from critics, unlike their previous material which were generally acclaimed. "Heart in a Cage" was the album's second single, followed by "You Only Live Once". NME rated First Impressions of Earth at #8 in its Albums of the Year 2006 list.

First Impressions of Earth entered the UK album chart at #1, The Strokes' first one at the top spot, while it reached #4 in the US, with an entry sales week of 88,000 units, somewhat below expectations. As of October 2006, the album has sold 271,000 units in the US, falling short of gold certification.

Track listing

All songs written by Julian Casablancas, except where noted.

"You Only Live Once" – 3:09
"Juicebox" – 3:17
"Heart in a Cage" – 3:27
"Razorblade" – 3:29
"On the Other Side" – 4:38
"Vision of Division" – 4:20
"Ask Me Anything" (Casablancas, Nick Valensi) – 3:12
"Electricityscape" – 3:33
"Killing Lies" (Casablancas, Nikolai Fraiture) – 3:50
"Fear of Sleep" – 4:00
"15 Minutes (Of Pain)" – 4:34
"Ize of the World" – 4:29
"Evening Sun" (Casablancas, Fabrizio Moretti) – 3:06
"Red Light" – 3:11

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06 January, 2008

The Strokes. Is This It (2001)

Is This It is The Strokes' debut album, released in 2001. The Strokes were the first band to break into the mainstream as part of the turn-of-the-millennium garage rock trend.

After signing with RCA Records, the band went on the opposite way of recording adopted by traditional rock bands. Instead of doing their full-length debut in a professional studio, the Strokes instead opted to record in a basement on Manhattan's Lower East Side, to which they put the name Transporter Raum Studio.

The album is highly influenced by garage rock, post-punk and pop music.

Hyped by the music press on both sides of the Atlantic, The Strokes' auspicious debut garnered them critical and popular attention, as well as a backlash from listeners turned off by the hype. Nonetheless, Is This It's more famous songs "The Modern Age", "Last Nite", "Hard to Explain" and "Someday" won the band much respect and helped the album reach #2 in the UK and #33 in the US.

The track "New York City Cops" was pulled from the North American edition of Is This It following the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack and was replaced by "When It Started". This was because the band and their management thought the song might be considered insensitive, particularly the main chorus line "New York City Cops, they ain't too smart", which is repeated throughout. The band still plays "New York City Cops" live and the song is available on the international edition of the album, along with its original cover art.

Is This It is one of the most critically acclaimed albums of the 2000s. It was ranked 89th in a 2005 survey held by British television's Channel 4 to determine the 100 greatest albums of all time. In 2003, the album was ranked number 367 on Rolling Stone Magazine's list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. In June 2005, the album was ranked number 100 on Spin Magazine's list of the "100 Greatest Albums, 1985-2005". In July 2006, the album was ranked 48 on The Observer's list of 'The 50 Albums That Changed Music.' In November 2007 Q magazine rated it at 21 in "21 albums that changed music" In addition to being ranked among the greatest albums of all time, the album cover [non-US version] has been ranked as one of the greatest album covers of all time. The U.S. cover is different due to censorship, it features a photo of particle collisions in the Big European Bubble Chamber.

The album is certified Platinum by the RIAA.

Track Listing

All songs by Julian Casablancas.

"Is This It" – 2:34
"The Modern Age" – 3:32
"Soma" – 2:37
"Barely Legal" – 3:58
"Someday" – 3:07
"Alone, Together" – 3:12
"Last Nite" – 3:17
"Hard to Explain" – 3:47
"New York City Cops" – 3:36
- "When It Started" (replaces "New York City Cops") – 2:57
"Trying Your Luck" – 3:27
"Take It or Leave It" – 3:16

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The Strokes. Room On Fire (2003)

Room on Fire is the second album by the band The Strokes. Released in October 2003, this album follows up 2001's Is This It and includes three singles" "12:51", "Reptilia" and "The End Has No End".

Grammy-winning producer Nigel Godrich (Radiohead, Travis, Beck) was initially tapped to produce Room on Fire, but the Strokes felt that he made the songs seem "soulless", and so they went back to Is This It producer Gordon Raphael.

Although Room on Fire received warm reviews upon release and reached #2 in the UK and debuted at #4 on the Billboard 200, going gold, the album's eventual US sales were significantly less than Is This It's 1 million units, with 597,000 sales in the US as of October 2006.

The album's opening track, "What Ever Happened?", was featured on the soundtrack to Sofia Coppola's 2006 film Marie Antoinette.

In October 2007, the Strokes' song "You Talk Way Too Much" was featured in a Ford Sync commercial.