And here it is. It’s been five long years since we last heard from the Strokes (it feels like longer, for some reason—perhaps because the access of music on the internet has dramatically shortened the typical pop record cycle?), and now here’s the first single from their upcoming record, Angles. Annnnndddd…. “Under Cover of Darkness,” ungainly title aside, sounds just like an old Strokes song. A speedy beat, some guitar lines that jut out (like, I don’t know, Angles?), a scruffy vocal from Julian Casablancas, and we’re right back where we started.
You know, it’s FINE. It’s not great or earthshattering, or anything remotely addictive the way great pop singles can be—hear this once and that’s plenty, you won’t exactly need to cue this up on repeat—but there are plenty of worse things that could have happened. It’s always nice to hear a pop song with a simple arrangement: guitars, real drums, actual vocals. But maybe that’s just me. Shrug.
End Hits: Shrugging our way through the hottest new releases.
I’d say: angular, but not quite as angular as I was expecting (like, more noodly).
I will never quite understand why music reviewers so often insist on pointing out that a new song or album isn’t “earthshattering” or “groundbreaking”. Who gives a fuck? What’s wrong with exploration within the bounds of a pre-established form? The very notion of a thing called music is ITSELF a pre-established form! Do you really think that ANY genre of music has exhausted ALL of its creative possibilities and configurations?
And why the expectation that bands should “reinvent the wheel”, so to speak, with every new release? While some bands are typically characterized by their unconventionality and willingness to experiment with new forms, many bands aren’t, and their further refinement of a form is sometimes their strongest asset.
One of my (many) gripes with Pitchfork reviews is exactly this point – they often (and you in this particular instance, Ned) seem to expect that artists ought to “change it up” to some considerable degree between releases, and to do less than that, or to not completely reinvent their sound absolutely requires a disclaimer such as “no new ground has been broken here”, with its implied, apathetic shrug.
In short, Ned, it’s fucking trope. It’s old hat to use phrases and comparisons of that sort. The next time you, and others of your ilk release another review, we, your readers, should start demanding that you invent new terms/classifications/categorizations to describe the music. Reinvent the wheel with your reviews, or else we’ll (shrug) read something else.
I fully agree. It’s FINE. Nothing excellent, certainly not the unique stuff that put them on the map. It’s fine.