3 Songs To Celebrate 25 Years of The Strokes’ Debut LP ‘Is This It’

The Strokes’ debut LP, Is This It, turns 25 this year, and I cannot believe I’ve just typed this sentence. So I want to take a look back and highlight three songs that helped make this album so pivotal in 2001. The Strokes landed amid overwhelming hype, and regardless of all the loose talk about saving rock and roll, Is This It has endured as one of rock history’s great debuts.

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So today we celebrate how a quarter century ago, Julian Casablancas, Nick Valensi, Albert Hammond Jr., Nikolai Fraiture, and Fabrizio Moretti emerged from New York City with a lean, hooky, coolly bored with it all, distorted classic. Is this it? You bet it is.

“Is This It”

By the early 2000s, modern rock had become stale as bands continued to dial up the angst. But easy access to recording software and the major record labels’ practice of using the same producers and mix engineers for most releases also resulted in a deluge of indistinguishable albums.

Working with producer Gordon Raphael, The Strokes recorded with Emagic Logic and Pro Tools, but opted for minimalism instead of the limitless options the software allowed. The title track, in its simplicity, was a breath of fresh air. It reminded me of hearing Nirvana for the first time. For those of us avoiding rock radio like the plague, The Strokes felt like a band with a shared record collection.

“The Modern Age”

Six months before Is This It arrived, “The Modern Age” was released as the title track to The Strokes’ debut EP. Rough Trade released what was essentially a three-song demo in the U.K., sparking a bidding war among record labels. Here, Julian Casablancas croons his tale dispassionately, which draws the most obvious comparisons to The Velvet Underground.

But then the guitarist Nick Valensi shreds the kind of solo you’d never hear on a Velvets record. The band made the familiar rawness of garage rock and post-punk feel like the song’s title. Casual listeners know “Last Nite” and “Someday”, but “The Modern Age” encapsulates what made The Strokes so exciting in 2001.

“Hard To Explain”

RCA released Is This It in the U.S. on October 9, 2001. The album was delayed due to 9/11, and “New York City Cops”, in a kind of national panic, was removed from the CD track list, though it remained on the vinyl. (“When It Started” appears in its place.) That November, my wife and I were standing in the crowd at Mississippi Nights in St. Louis, watching The Strokes play to a packed club. I was, myself decked out in a leather jacket and unkempt bangs, blown away.

In Casablancas, lumbering near his mic stand, I noticed echoes of Liam Gallagher’s I-don’t-give-a-toss swagger. But The Strokes were one of the most exciting new bands I’d seen since an early Oasis show. You’re lucky when you get to see a great band on the verge of exploding. Many were turned off by the hype at the time. But they should have gone to a gig. It’s hard to explain.

Photo by Anthony PIdgeon/Redferns