This record is fun, it’s exuberant, and it’s diverse – and yet nothing sounds unnatural or feels crowbarred in.
The Strokes will never get back the raw magic of Is This It? but, with Comedown Machine, they’ve cast a different spell entirely – one that’s almost joyful.
The Strokes' most mature music yet, Comedown Machine is a solidly enjoyable album, even if it lacks some of the band's previous spark.
It’s flawed, it’s imperfect and it’s downright odd at points, but it is packed with belting tunes. Most of all, it’s fun – a great achievement considering it hasn’t looked like fun being in The Strokes for years.
Comedown Machine is their best album since they hit perfection with their debut.
They’ve played around, tested themselves – unburdened themselves of anyone’s expectations other than their own – and won.
Comedown Machine is guaranteed to please fans of The Strokes’ previous two albums, though it may further alienate the Is This It? diehards.
While Comedown Machine sounds—and more importantly flows—like Angles, it finds some new charms.
Their best songs pack more riffs, eighth notes, energy, spunk, and humor into three minutes than most fit into a whole album. Comedown Machine doesn’t so much combine those factors as it does spread them out unevenly.
True to the album’s title, it’s comfortable and less persuasive. The risks feel warranted, even if it doesn’t result in something that’s sticky or punchy. This might explain why the album doesn’t carry a single hit.
As long as they keep stumbling into the same studio every few years, The Strokes will probably continue making albums like Comedown Machine: reliably solid, mostly enjoyable, slightly disappointing for reasons that are difficult to articulate.
While Comedown Machine drags itself through a number of dead zones (most notably the dud pair of the title track and “50 50”), there are moments where they recapture some of what made them a great band.
The limitations of Comedown Machine's protracted diversity all come back to Casablancas, a man with wide range as a listener and extremely narrow range as a musician.
Development often coming at the expense of core qualities: they're virtually unrecognisable as the band that made their game-changing debut.
Full of clever sounds, with melodies butting up against countermelodies and more laughs than you might think, Comedown Machine is by no means a bad record. It just has the misfortune of being the record that few Strokes fans want from them.
We seem far enough away from the dazzling hype surrounding their classic 2001 debut to treat Comedown Machine for what it is — not the album to put them back on top but a curious collection of Eighties-influenced guitar pop with a handful of great moments.
Why is Comedown Machine an official Strokes album instead of another Casablancas solo album? Only a Stroke could tell you.
As it is, Comedown Machine is an effort where successive listens and dissections of the songs ultimately reveal more meaning and comprehension. Good, not magnificent.
A scuffed-up but fine-tuned power-pop band that's never been less than the sum of its influences casts its net wider, or maybe just into different waters.
Expectations have always been ridiculously high for this group, but Comedown Machine fails to get the Strokes any closer to meeting them.
For the most part, this sounds like a band running low on ideas, or motivation, or the indefinable magic that makes a band a band.
When the best compliment that you can possibly pay an album is “at least it’s better than their last record” (remember Angles, anyone? Of course you don’t) it becomes obvious that a band is clearly treading water creatively, with their best days sadly long behind them.
If this is all they can muster, their future looks anything but bright, and the most damning indictment is that they sound bored by the effort.
Overall, it might not be fair for The Strokes to have to live under the shadow of their own previous successes. But when you know a band can be that good, it's frustrating to hear the same band put out an album this forgettable.
Just like the band itself, it presents something of an ongoing identity crisis for the band, one that hasn’t figured out how to advance their sound except to put more meat on the bones
Not the sound I want out of this band. I don't expect another "Is This It", but this doesn't even seem like they are trying anymore.
this album is very forgettable and some of the songs are just downright bad and horrible to the ear. in my opinion this is The Strokes' worst record.
Comedown Machine goes further with the band experimenting with electronics and production and even though It is probably their weakest album due to nothing really standing out besides the opener and closer, it still provides a lot of interesting moments for if you are engaged by it.
1 | Tap Out 3:42 | 83 |
2 | All the Time 3:01 | 74 |
3 | One Way Trigger 4:02 | 85 |
4 | Welcome To Japan 3:50 | 85 |
5 | 80's Comedown Machine 4:58 | 79 |
6 | 50/50 2:43 | 77 |
7 | Slow Animals 4:20 | 73 |
8 | Partners In Crime 3:21 | 74 |
9 | Chances 3:36 | 74 |
10 | Happy Ending 2:52 | 72 |
11 | Call It Fate, Call It Karma 3:24 | 84 |
#41 | / | NME |
#47 | / | Q Magazine |