ALBUMS OF THE WEEK
The title of The Strokes’ sixth album could hardly be more appropriate and it is also the New Yorkers’ best since 2001’s decade-defining Is This It.
I’m not suffering from self-isolation psychosis blues either, these are nine songs that find formerly wayward lead singer Julian Casablancas at his most effective and bandmates Albert Hammond Junior et al at their minimalist best. Never a band who’ve been shy of mining the punk era for inspiration, they appropriate the spirit of Dancing With Myself by Billy
Idol’s punk era band Generation X to such an extent on Bad Decisions that Idol and the band’s bassist Tony James get a co-writing credit. Similarly, Psychedelic Furs will be pleased when the royalties roll in for partly inspiring Eternal Summer. The cool of another seventies outfit, The Cars, has always wafted around The Strokes like a leather-scented breeze; Casablancas sounds like Ric
Ocasek on the outro to The Adults Are Talking. Producer Rick Rubin has steered The Strokes 2020 steadily this time. Casablancas has rarely sounded as plaintive as he does on the sublime Selfless.
‘I want new friends, but they don’t want me,’ he sings on Brooklyn Bridge To Chorus. Wanna bet Julian? Friends old, fairweather and new will revel in The New Abnormal.
If Lorde had grown up in Liverpool, not Auckland, and formed a band whose influences ranged from Chvrches, through the Kooks to Vampire Weekend, she and they might have sounded like Zuzu. On her six-song mini album, the 25 year old scouser accomplishes the nifty trick of sounding readymade for late night indie rock shows, daytime radio and the attention on anybody’s randomly generated Spotify list. Tracks such as Skin And Bone, Can’t Be Alone, How It Feels and What You Want urgently require your attention.
Danny McElhinney