My first brush with the new Strokes record was, unsurprisingly, driving to work one day. The single “Bad Decisions” immediately caught my ear for its infectious groove and hook and for its uncanny similarity to Modern English’s “I Melt With You.”
While my first impresion of the record is that many would write off as a copyright red flag, I enjoyed it. I’m pretty easy to please, though.
The New Abnormal as a whole is a record that feels uncertain. I enjoy it as a whole, but I feel unsure of my opinion often as I listen. The album’s nine tracks do not go by quickly. They invite you to linger in the moment, as moderately bizarre as it may be. If you came into this expecting a redux of Is This It, you’re mistaken. The summation of the album can be experienced in some of the final words of album closer “Ode to the Mets”: “Gone now are the old times / Forgotten, time to hold on the railing / The Rubik’s Cube isn’t solving for us… So pardon the silence that you’re hearing / Is turnin’ into a deafening, painful, shameful roar!”
I can hear elements of that uncertainty all throughout the album. And at no time is uncertainty more overwhelming than when you’re forced to sit in silence with your own thoughts. Tyler Joseph said it well when he mused “Sometimes quiet is violent.” A close second is when you’re a kid, and you’re excluded from a conversation because “The Adults Are Talking.” See what I did there? Haha. Actually, that feeling is expressed well in the album opener of that name, too.
Darkness can be expressed via dancey synthpop, too. “Brooklyn Bridge to Chorus” does thus, hearkening back to the golden age of indie-alt-dance in the late 00s and early 2010s (Phoenix, Two Door Cinema Club, anyone?). “Eternal Summer” has a bit of a bait and switch effect, at a surface level sounding like a carefree midtempo dream pop jam, but with unsettling lyrics and effects sprinkled in at intervals that are nearly unnoticable. Is it possible to have too much of a good thing? There’s that uncertainty again. At least its bathed in sunny tones and breezy falsetto.
Right now, I’m still not sure how I feel about this new output by The Strokes. But I can already feel it beckoning for more listening. Other critics seem to be giving the album mediocre reviews; I’m not sure we can jump to that conclusion. There’s a lot to unpack that will extend beyond this review.
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