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Critic Reviews
90
Disjointed, hyperactive, experimental, whatever. Angles is the album to beat this year.
15y
83
Once miscast as game-changing saviors of the underground, The Strokes have proven once again with Angles that they are actually one of the era's top mainstream pop-rock acts, uniquely gifted at crafting catchy, radio-ready rock songs at a time when such a thing seems like a quaint remnant of a distant past.
15y
80
It’s The Strokes trying on a load of outfits to see what fits and personally, I think a lot of them fit well.
15y
80
Indecision and infighting have rarely sounded this solid and inspired.
10y
80
Perhaps they should have been more democratic in the past, because this is a terrific record that plays to The Strokes; Strengths and also adds fresh colour to their palette.
5y
80
While The Strokes have outgrown any notions of being rock’s saviours, in doing so they could just have delivered what might be their best album since ‘Is This It’. It’s certainly their most diverse.
11y
80
Angles ends up being one of the group's more compelling efforts, rather than the casualty of experimentation it could have been.
11y
80
It remains enviably exciting, classically cool and features the kind of guitar pop highlights that only The Strokes can make wholly credible.
11y
80
With its sudden-U-turn songwriting and curt execution, Angles is the best album that Casablancas, guitarists Nick Valensi and Albert Hammond Jr., bassist Nikolai Fraiture and drummer Fabrizio Moretti have made since 2001's Is This It, the cannonball that inaugurated the modern-garage era.
11y
80
While Angles lacks a definite image, it is the band's best purely musical statement, and as the band members explore their 30s, perhaps it is time for them to retire their young, aggressive punk image and become successes in the first sense of the word -- strictly musical.
10y
80
It’s a sultry exhibition, one that spotlights the band’s strengths, yet also its weaknesses.
15y
80
Angles works splendidly, and is a salutary reminder of how adept they are at shaping indie-pop moments.
5y
80
On Angles, the Strokes' trick isn't fooling us into thinking these tunes fell to Stanton Street fully formed. It's that a group of reunited rock stars somehow come on like wide-eyed kids.
15y
80
There aren't many instantly identifiable bands that can mess with the familiar recipe while somehow also honoring it, but that's precisely what the Strokes have achieved on Angles, an album as warm as it is cool.
15y
80
Angles fits 10 songs into a brisk 34 minutes and doesn't waste time gunning for gravitas.
Print Only
3y
77
Too many people will listen to Angles once and declare it a train wreck. Please, don’t do that. Give it a few extra chances. Once you get past the initial WTF-ness of its odd first impressions, you’ll find the tight songwriting that initially drew you to this band endures.
14y
75
The good news is that The Strokes have delivered a good album. The bad news is that for all its throwback production, it doesn't really sound much like The Strokes, and many of their longtime fans are probably going to be disappointed in an album that doesn't retreat to the sound of the band's glory days with its tail between its legs.
15y
74
For better or worse, the Strokes seem and sound the same as they ever did.
7y
70
Despite nods to the lean, melodic garage rock of the Strokes' debut record, the songs here are far too diverse to adhere to the pop-slaying aesthetic of 10 years ago.
6y
70
‘Angles’ isn’t perfect, but if it marks a new phase of creativity and togetherness for the group, then it could be more of a success than even ‘Is This It’.
15y
70
Ultimately, Angles' best moments are reassuring rather than exciting, offering proof that the Strokes can still make an album together, and hope that it'll come more naturally to them next time.
15y
70
New York posh rockers stretch the seams of alt indie.
6y
70
On their latest LP, the Strokes want to head in a new direction, but they can't decide on one. So they use every track to obtain a different sound.
8y
67
It finds the band at their most confident, and their most relaxed.
11y
67
Angles reveals a newfound earnestness: For the first time, it actually feels like the guys are trying.
10y
60
Most importantly, they don’t actually do anything new – there’s not a note on Angles that they haven’t already played thrice over before. Still, when it works, no one’s better at that louche, three-chord melodic simplicity and vocal standoffishness, delivered with just the right amount of scuzz.
5y
60
Julian Casablancas and co have been doing some thinking: This Is It.
5y
60
Comeback albums, it seems, are not just for other bands to do.
5y
60
Angles is a document of the Strokes operating more as a task force than a real band; even though the album's allegedly fractured recording sessions resulted in the first Strokes LP to feature writing credits from every member of the band, this is more of a show of individuals tinkering with each track rather than any true cooperative effort.
11y
60
Angles homespun demeanour is key to its appeal. There are flaws.
Print Only
3y
60
Though Angles does sparkle occasionally with slices of apparently effortless pop suss, there are numerous songs clearly plucked from the mental bin marked “filler”.
11y
60
When all is said and done, Angles could make for an exciting introduction to a new chapter for The Strokes, or it could be a disappointing swan song.
11y
60
They're maturing gracelessly, still in love with the fool's gold myth of rock and roll, which is precisely why Angles succeeds as a record.
13y
60
The Strokes have managed to culture a great sense of the schizophrenic on Angles, mapping polar tones in tandem to produce a record that feels both confused and entirely deliberate.
15y
60
It’s odd that a group that’s pretty much better than anyone else at being too cool for school sometimes seems to be trying too hard on Angles.
15y
59
Not a roaring comeback as much as a glorified spit-balling session.
15y
50
Ten years ago, The Strokes posed a clever rhetorical question: Is This It? Seems we finally have the answer.
13y
45
Most of Angles finds The Strokes trying as hard as possible not to sound like The Strokes. This is done, in part, by recycling the least palatable parts of their last LP, and interpolating them with weird, near-atonal choruses.
7y
40
It would be nice if Strokes albums, which now fall from the sky at lengthening intervals, arrived as a welcome reminder of how exciting and cool rock music can be. Since 2001’s era-defining debut, Is This It?, however, this hasn’t been the case.
5y
40
Plenty of great records have been made in an atmosphere of terrible acrimony. But Angles just sounds like an album made by people who really didn't want to make an album.
10y
40
We shall forever love them for Is This It, but if The Strokes are to remain relevant, they need to dig deeper.
6mo
30
The Strokes aren’t simply a great let-down, but the best-band-that-should-have-broken-up-long-ago.
15y
20
Angels is bloody terrible. It’s awful, it’s dire.
9y
Hi guys!
Welcome to my...
β¨1 πππΌπ πΌππππππππΌππ ππππππβ¨
πI have been on this site for one year now, heck yeah!!!
πI want to discuss some stuff before we move onto the review...
First off, I want to start by saying Thank You.
Thank you guys for accepting me into the community. When I first made my account, I had one thing in mind, I wanted to make an account where I would archive the music I have listened to, and to rate ... read more
I was really surprised by how good this album is. And it's also strange that the average rating is 74. Damn, it's a great album, all the songs are bangers. I've heard many of the songs before. One of these is Taken For a Fool. Taken For a Fool is probably my favorite song from this band. And I'm also very glad that there are so many good things here. This album is maybe even better than Room On Fire
Man, I just love The Strokes so much.
Machu Picchu and Life is Simple in the Moonlight are fucking amazing songs.
really good actually. machu picchu and under cover of darkness are TOP TIER strokes songs. my only complaint is that some deeper cuts are kind of meh and not as interesting but still great album
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Track List
| 1 | Machu Picchu 3:29 | 91 |
| 2 | Under Cover of Darkness 3:55 | 93 |
| 3 | Two Kinds of Happiness 3:42 | 78 |
| 4 | You're So Right 2:33 | 72 |
| 5 | Taken For a Fool 3:23 | 86 |
| 6 | Games 3:51 | 75 |
| 7 | Call Me Back 3:02 | 74 |
| 8 | Gratisfaction 2:59 | 79 |
| 9 | Metabolism 3:00 | 77 |
| 10 | Life Is Simple In the Moonlight 4:15 | 89 |
Total Length: 34 minutes
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