It’s instantly apparent that The Strokes have grown as musicians since Room on Fire. Hammond and Valensi, when not supporting each other’s guitar work with perfect counterpoint, play concise, brilliant solos that at times sound like inspired wanking, and other times like Hebraic heavy metal. On the angst-drenched, “Visions of Division,” their guitars build a funeral pyre, growing the tension to near unbearable levels as Casablancas screams, “Why do I accept the things you say,” at the top of his lungs. Lead single “Juicebox” finds its glory in a dissonant chorus and a thundering, Peter Gunn-style bassline. “On the Other Side” lopes along on an ‘80s sexercise groove as Julian has a small existential breakdown, moaning about his half-dead heart (“I hate my friends, I hate myself, I hate my friend’s friends?”).
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But there’s one more musical skeleton lurking in The Strokes’ closet. After being accused of aping The Velvet Underground and Television since their inception, the band now has another icon’s influence to live down; the chorus of “Razorblade” nicks its melody cleanly from Barry Manilow’s cheesy love-ode “Mandy.”
“I don’t know, I sort of knew the song,” explains Julian when asked, “but I was going more for a Built to Spill vibe. The two-note back and forth melody are the same,” he says, minimizing the connection, “but the chords are kind of different. I knew it but I didn’t like the song so much, so I didn’t care. I got nothing against Barry Manilow, I like my Manilow,” he laughs. “We talked about it, more than one person said something to that effect, but I don’t know, that song is so irrelevant to me, I guess. It’s unfortunate, but yeah, what can you do.”
There’s more going on in Julian’s mind then he lets on in interviews. Each song on Impressions contains its own secret message, hidden inside the liner notes. The inscription for “Ize of the World” poses the question, “Can our minds evolve to be something other than an extension of our animal need?”
Julian’s lyrics have stretched out as well. Largely leaving behind his file of contradictory one-liners from the first two albums (“I should have worked much harder/I should have just not bothered”), he mixes in high school notebook poetry (“Ize of the World”), describes a strange yet peaceful dream (“15 Minutes”) and muses about religion (“You Only Live Once”), being seen at concerts (“Heat in a Cage”), and summer camps and hostile Indians (“Ask Me Anything”).
“I try to avoid things that are too sappy or make too little sense, that are way over the top, like arty intellectual bizarre-o shit that no one’s gonna enjoy except for some mathematician or something,” says Julian. Still, “15 Minutes,” the first Strokes song in waltz time, follows its own beguiling internal logic (“Third time’s a charm/circle of fourths/five days to rehearse/six to make it work/seven notes in a scale/eight in some countries/nine in fancy keys/ten years we been friends/eleven seconds to hell/and of course/twelve major chords.”) “I always feel like if you don’t like the chords or the chord progressions when you’re writing a song, throw it out,” he adds.
The most revolutionary song in The Strokes’ catalogue almost didn’t make it on the album. The jokingly titled “Ask me Anything,” which repeats the line “I’ve got Nothing to Say” some fifteen times, was conceived in the studio during a final overdubbing session. Julian first heard the song’s richly crooned melody in a dream, except when he heard it, it was the dance-rock band Scissor Sisters singing it. There’s a desperate, near-suicidal edge to much of the lyric (“I’ve got nothing to give, got no reason to live, we could drag it out, but that’s for other bands to do”), but it’s sung with a wink, as if he knows that ultimately, everything’s going to be okay. It’s a strange little dirge of a song, and it’s the first one not to feature any other band members. (Julian sings over a lone mellotron.)
I enjoyed this.