They’ve stopped hanging round the school gates, chewing gum and spitting on the path, got their hair trimmed and relocated to the college dorms. Room On Fire sees The Strokes shrugging off impressionable youth and sounding much more like, well, themselves. The most obvious Max’s cabaret aspects are gone, and you won’t find any Iggy and the Velvets rewrites like ‘The Modern Age’. Forget about that ill-fitting teen-sensation tag, they’re now the guys on the periphery of the loft-painting party, occupying a spot previously kept warm by bands like The Feelies, REM, Sonic Youth, early Talking Heads, Pavement, Wire, Gang Of Four – smart but not entirely smart-arsed art-school bands.
It sounds like they were wise to ditch those Nigel Godrich sessions. Producer Gordon Raphael is integral to their sound, a fly on the wall handi-cam man trusted to take verite shots of this quintet’s evolution. If Godrich is akin to Neil Jordan, an artful stylist who brings his own sensibility to every subject, Raphael is Jim Jarmusch or John Cassavetes, allowing the players’ performances to evolve in camera obscura, letting the process become the product.
So, as I say, they sound more like their own men now. Julian Casablancas is a limited but emotive vocalist with the knack of putting an interesting twist on a melody, and when he lets rip, as on the opener ‘Whatever Happened’ or ‘The End Has No End’, it’s a real thrill. Plus, guitarists Albert and Nick have evolved – they still contrast the quicksilver melodies of a Tom Verlaine versus Lou Reed’s rhythm, but they’ve also copped a few extra tricks, like the blatant Cars melody on the single ‘12.51’, and when they co-opt white reggae on ‘Automatic Stop’ it’s for rhythm rather than novelty effect.
So, these songs are somewhat more obtuse and evasive than before, less likely to walk right up and bum a light the way ‘NYC Cops’ or ‘Last Nite’ did. Room On Fire is not going to give anyone heart seizure, but like the debut, it knows how to make a virtue of economy. The Strokes, if you’ll indulge the metaphor, know the price of film stock. Of course, there’s every chance that the left-field curves this record occasionally throws will divest them of buzz-band status, but it bodes well for the long-term.