Is This It

Launched at the end of July in 2001,right before the whole world as we then knew it changed, The Strokes' "Is This It" is a seminal album: it influenced everything that came after it, historically and musically.

The album picks up with the title-track, a quiet, ballad-like song that pulls you into the band's world: starting with an electronic frizzle, its base line immediately synchs with your heartbeat, and eventually asks the Big Question : "Is this it?". The album intentionally evades giving the answer away from the start (or maybe at all). It's a ballad that talks about casual, pass-the-time, waste-your-life relationships, and sometimes the futile attempts at happiness pursuing such a relationship implies. No angst comes though, none is needed here- the second track, "The Modern Age" is all about fun, living the moment, and not giving a damn about the rest. Its fascinatingly difficult, but oh-so-subtle guitar solo coupled with the staccato verse create a joyful atmosphere: jumping around in childlike wonder is not only normal, it's obligatory ("It's in my blood" yells Casablancas- it's in ours too.).

While the third track evokes the punch-drunk confusion that falling in love puts you in, while "Barely Legal" inverts the same concept : losing one's virginity. Walking on thin ice is easy for The Strokes here though-"It all works somehow in the end", and it does. No beat seems out of place, no guitar chord is gratuitous, the lyrics and music complement each other perfectly, and "Is This It" becomes more and more of a personal experience as "Someday" begins. It's a blunt, honest track ("In many ways they'll miss the good old days";"It hurts to say but I want you to stay" or "Promises they break before they're made"), proving that rock can indeed be fun and intelligent at the same time without sounding condescending. It does not get more accessible than this, neither does it get more fun.

Irony abounds in this album, the sixth track standing testament to this fact. "Alone, Together" again treats relationships, and although the lyrics might seem sad, melancholic even if taken out of context, one listen and you realize what message The Strokes are trying to convey, maybe even find the answer to the Big Question. You can't ponder these facts for more than mere seconds at a time when your ears are bombarded with such sublime songs : "Last Night" is the perfect after-party song: it's the sound of a foggy memory trying to place itself back together even though, as plainly as Casablancas puts it "They won't understand".

The following two songs are the most powerful on the album by a long shot. "Hard to Explain" is a frantically paced narrative that needs several listens just to be understood, but only one to be enjoyed (the same can be said about the album in the end),the crazy chorus percolating into the listeners subconscious, flowing so naturally, it feels like ones mother tongue. Singing his heart out about "New York City Cops", dusty apartments and people who ” act like Romans/But dress like Turks", The Strokes have an infinite supply of energy and candor on these two tracks, singing as though they know they are the greatest band in the universe (maybe for a little while they even were).

Human emotion is a major theme in this masterpiece and the final two songs describe two very familiar ones: confusion ("Trying Your Luck") and confidence, the warranted kind ("Take It Or Leave It"). Both are so beautiful, that by the time the album ends, pressing play over and over again is the only logical step.

But how about the Big Question? Is this it? Unfortunately for The Strokes, judging by their inferior second and third albums, it probably is. We shouldn't be sad that The Strokes never managed to live up to their debut, and probably never will though.

An album like this seems all the more unlikely in this postmillennial music landscape we currently reside in. Ironically, "Is This It" does not belong in the alternative rock scene it helped create at the beginning of the "noughties", but rather in Rock Music's Valhalla, a work that deserves to be considered sacred especially because it's so fatally human.

It's the proof that sometimes, being perfect only once is enough.

10/10 Stefan