You don’t know what you think. We don’t really know what we think. That our budget won’t stretch to mailing a pendulum and pocket Paul McKenna to every reader is a crying shame (a Flash animation just wouldn’t do the trick). That’s the only way we could imagine you – both the serial sceptics and unfaltering scene stalkers – approaching this CD with any degree of restraint or perspective. Because it really doesn’t deserve what it will get from either of you. In truth this is a pretty good album, but that it’s been taken out of context before it could even be taken out of its box has ruined it for everyone. If their London unveiling at Heaven back in 2001 was an uncomfortable exercise in hypodermic media infiltration, that they return to play Alexandra Palace is as plain ridiculous as it is inappropriate and leaves someone with a lot to answer for. They should be supporting Guided by Voices and appearing in their videos. They are not the new Guns N Freakin’ Roses.
This can only ever be music for small rooms and friends, for playing on walkmans on bus rides, for piercing acne to and maybe even forming bands around but little more, because it doesn’t have the legs to extend beyond that. Or shouldn’t. Like every other Strokes song you’ve ever heard (and there aren’t that many), every one on ‘Room On Fire’ goes a little this way, then a little that way, then back again, operating under the tap-your-foot-but-don’t-displace-a-hair manifesto. There are some new subtleties (buried hand claps, electric drums) and a seasoned maturity and comfort with what they do, don’t deny them that. But at the expense of that goes the coursing adrenaline and loose naivety that made ‘Is This It?’ more magic than many doubters cared to admit. That fell out of them, this was made to order. And it shows.
It remains the case, only more so, that they’ll take a glimmer of an idea, run with it, clock their timepieces and then just stop. Dead. That’s the limits of a pop song in this time-zone and they sure as hell ain’t going to be overstepping any marks at all. Perplexingly they do bookend ‘The End Has No End’ with the drum intro to The Pixies’ ‘Monkey Gone To Heaven’, but that only serves to highlight how typical the filling is. Save for 14 seconds of the best damn hedonistic head-out-of-the-window-screaming middle-eight they have yet committed to tape. But then that’s the album all over, like staring out the window on an inter-city train, just select moments surrounded by space that’s familiar before you’ve even noticed it. Only without the delays. Sadly that is as great a compliment as it gets sometimes.
But as tightly honed and no-real-complaint satisfying as the back-end is, what does the pretty-boy of a generation dress it up with? “So many fish, there in the sea, I wanted you, you wanted me”? “That was you up on the mountain, all alone and all surrounded”? “Our lives are changing lanes, you ran me off the road”? Hardly clung onto a shred of the barely-into-his-twenties vim and angry spirit of ‘New York City Cops’ or ‘Last Nite’ has he? Christ, you didn’t care about tomorrow, or today for that matter, when he sang that. And aside from some interesting mumbled nuggets hidden away in the lyric booklet, it’s like the first draft of a bad break-up letter. And that says nothing or gives no impression of the life of a free-willed 20-something in ripped denim in New York City, or anywhere else for that matter. It’s like he’s regressed and they’ve stood still, and that really puts into context the differences. Time may yet be kind to this follow up, but under the moment’s harsh spotlight its markings are looking more like scrapes than strokes.