The Strokes – Room On Fire – VINYL LP

Description

CHANGE IS GOOD. It can be important, even historic. It is not always necessary. One of the best things about Room on Fire, the Strokes’ second album, is that, in most of the ways that matter, it is exactly like their first. Nick Valensi’s and Albert Hammond Jr.’s dirty-treble guitars cut ‘n’ thrust over the hard-rubber bounce of bassist Nikolai Fraiture and drummer Fabrizio Moretti. Singer-songwriter Julian Casablancas delivers his put-up-or-fuck-off telegrams in a brusque, corrosive drawl, and producer Gordon Raphael wraps up the whole package with airtight austerity. On first impact, Room on Fire is to 2001’s Is This It as the Ramones’ second album, Leave Home, was to their knuckle-sandwich debut — a perfect twin.

But the Strokes who made Room on Fire are not the cocky overnight sensations of two years ago. In the album’s opening damage report, “What Ever Happened?,” Casablancas’ voice is so disfigured by fuzz in the first verse (“I wanna be forgotten/And I don’t wanna be reminded”), it’s as if he’s singing over a broken speakerphone from a burning building. Like any good New Yorker, Casablancas is suspicious and impatient by nature. But the distance and distrust in his songwriting and ashen monotone on Is This It were nothing like this. Casablancas sings the title chorus of “You Talk Way Too Much” with cold, dry calm — the high, mocking whine of the lead-guitar break provides extra cruelty — and wraps up the brittle reggae of “Automatic Stop” with even less gallantry: “I’m not your friend/I never was.” rollingstone.com

Tracklist :

A1 What Ever Happened?
A2 Reptilia
A3 Automatic Stop
A4 12:51
A5 You Talk Way Too Much
B1 Between Love & Hate
B2 Meet Me In The Bathroonm
B3 Under Control
B4 The Way It Is
B5 The End Has No End
B6 I Can’t Win