Maybe it’s just another case of unreasonably high expectations, but the two new singles from The Strokes are leaving me cold. I was, after all, the girl with the big poster of Julian Casablancas on my wall as a teenager and I still gleefully listen to Is This It when the mood strikes me. So I have to wonder, am I just another boring indie-kid who just doesn’t like the band branching out into new sounds?
“One Way Trigger,” the first single off the soon-to-be-released album Comedown Machine is nothing if not a change in sound. Where there was once sloppy rock swagger there is a more polished sheen; where Casablancas would once growl he now sings in what I guess is a falsetto — it’s a little too grating to tell.
It’s not that “On Way Trigger” commits the sin of being different than what I loved about them, but that it strangely discards most of the things they do well (guitar rock, dirty sounds) and replaces it with something that they aren’t really that good at (electro pop…?). I can applaud them for doing something so outside of their wheelhouse but they absolutely didn’t stick the landing.
The official single off the record “All the Time” leaves me cold in a different way. Where “One Way Trigger” was jarringly different, this track is more The Strokes I fell in love with — it’s just boring. I’ve put the track on about five times and still can’t really tell you about it; my mind begins to wander about a minute in. There’s the guitars and the boozy static of a Strokes song, but none of the energy.
Perhaps my days of being a Strokes fan have simply passed me by. I’m not a teenage girl with a crush anymore, after all. Perhaps I’m too stuck in my ways in wishing for music the band isn’t interested in making anymore. Or perhaps these are just some really subpar songs.