Rocks In The Attic #53: The Strokes - ‘Is This It’ (2001)

I remember at the turn of the century, when the NME was proudly declaring that The Strokes were going to save music, somebody wrote in and asked when they eventually did come over to the UK to play live, would they walk out on stage in black and white?

This record was hyped to buggery when it came out. It doesn’t live up to the hype, but it’s not bad. It has a great cover, of a Smell The Glove-like hand resting on a bare lady’s behind. I’m sure feminists would complain that the image is sexist; but as Nigel Tufnel quite correctly pointed out, “What’s wrong with being sexy?”

Is This It didn’t make me fall in love with The Strokes. If anything, it put me off them as the NME had been promising that they were the band to end all bands, and they have been saying this for a very long time before anybody had actually heard anything by them. Nobody could live up to that sort of hype. This was before mySpace took over as the cheap and easy way of making your music accessible to the whole world, so perhaps this was the last band to be broken in the traditional way by the music press.

I eventually got to see The Strokes play at a mini-festival in Manchester - when they were touring their third album. They didn’t walk out on stage in black and white.

Hit: Last Nite

Hidden Gem: The Modern Age