Hey folks!

Today’s Best Album of 2001 match is:

#2 The Strokes, IS THIS IT

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vs.

#127 Ryan Adams, GOLD

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To vote, follow this link to the Google Form. You will need a Google login to vote. If you can’t or won’t have one, let me know ASAP (either through this newsletter, my email [kentmbeeson@hey.com] or on the Best Album Brackets Bluesky account) and I’ll see what I can do.

We have one Designated Cheerleader today, it’s from @tomewing.bsky.social, and it’s for IS THIS IT. Take it away, Tom!

Is This It is fundamentally a pop record. I bought it at the same time as the Kylie album which is a pop album in a surprisingly similar way to The Strokes - pop that’s stylish and new but also in love with pop’s own past, specifically a particular idea of New York cool. At the distance of 25 years, the difference between Studio 54 and CBGBs no longer seemed terribly important. At the distance of 25 more years, it matters even less.

The Strokes is a new wave record decades after the new wave receded, a band imitating bands imitating the Velvet Underground’s VU and Another View (for a while the easiest records to get by them). Kylie is a pop star wearing disco like a vintage dress. Neither - sorry “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head” - sound remotely like the future, though plenty of music from 2001 did. But both are pop music, understanding that part of pop’s central appeal is great hooks, cool worn lightly, a nice arse.

The Strokes did turn out to be the future (briefly) and people have written books mythologising that. What struck me at the time was how exhausted they sounded by their own poses: Julian Casablancas’ vocals are a bored croak, straining for affect then fraying into a trail of ennui. Is this it? Can this really be where the grand boho rock tradition is ending up? He sometimes sounds up for it, or at least the picture of hot diffidence, but more often he feels the weight of indie hopes like Frodo feels the One Ring. “I will do my best” he sings on “Someday”, sounding sad and small.

What saves him are his band, who refuse to slack off or slow down, approaching each song like a sprint, functional and lean, giving their singer’s langour a chance to unfold itself on each song without actually losing any of the track’s energy. Is This It is admirable in its refusal to dick around. Nothing breaks four minutes, a minor miracle in a bloated year. Everything has a functional hook or two, and everything could be danced to.

Someone who wrote for my site at the time - I forget which writer it was, I’m sorry - had the excellent insight that the Strokes and the scene around them were American Britpop. A retro scene based on pop’s first principles (see above about the nice arses) and driven by bright young things in a bright young city. Fair enough, I think. Is This It reminds me a lot of Elastica by Elastica, the same “we’re stealing stuff? What are you going to do about it?” energy.

But while I don’t have much time for most Britpop and less time for most of what came after The Strokes, I think Is This It is even better than that, because of that ennui, that sense of decadence, the feeling you get that the band know it’s all downhill from here, for them and for rock music and white boy cool itself.

The second worst song on Is This It is the only one that you might briefly worry is about something, “New York City Cops”, and it’s still pretty good. (You can forgive it as it annoyed the actual NYC Cops, too). The worst song is “Trying Your Luck”, the closest they come to sloth. And the best song on Is This It isn’t on Is This It at all, it’s the bootleg version of “Hard To Explain” that grants Casablancas the release from toil he’s been searching for and puts Christina Aguilera’s “Genie In A Bottle” vocal line over the top. Suddenly a space opens up where The Strokes and Kylie could meet.

It works because “Hard To Explain” is a disco record, the realisation of which unlocked the whole album for me back in 2001. The rhythms of Is This It aren’t sophisticated or even groovy but they are party rhythms and that’s why they still sound good.

A Dedicated Champion by Tom Ewing. Written in the 35’48” the album took to play. Over and out.

Click here to see the current results for the entire tournament, and click here to see the current results for the prediction bracket contest.

Yesterday, #85 Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros, GLOBAL A GO-GO defeated #44 The Beta Band, HOT SHOTS II, 113-103-2.

Thanks,

Kent