Disjointed, hyperactive, experimental, whatever. Angles is the album to beat this year.
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.
It’s The Strokes trying on a load of outfits to see what fits and personally, I think a lot of them fit well.
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.
Angles ends up being one of the group's more compelling efforts, rather than the casualty of experimentation it could have been.
It remains enviably exciting, classically cool and features the kind of guitar pop highlights that only The Strokes can make wholly credible.
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.
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.
Angles works splendidly, and is a salutary reminder of how adept they are at shaping indie-pop moments.
Angles fits 10 songs into a brisk 34 minutes and doesn't waste time gunning for gravitas.
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.
It’s a sultry exhibition, one that spotlights the band’s strengths, yet also its weaknesses.
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.
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.
‘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’.
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.
Angles reveals a newfound earnestness: For the first time, it actually feels like the guys are trying.
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.
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.
Though Angles does sparkle occasionally with slices of apparently effortless pop suss, there are numerous songs clearly plucked from the mental bin marked “filler”.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Not a roaring comeback as much as a glorified spit-balling session.
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.
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.
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.
The Strokes aren’t simply a great let-down, but the best-band-that-should-have-broken-up-long-ago.
Angels is bloody terrible. It’s awful, it’s dire.
Man, I just love The Strokes so much.
Machu Picchu and Life is Simple in the Moonlight are fucking amazing songs.
BAND BINGE: THE STROKES (PART 10N OF 21ENTYONE)
Oh boy this album had an uphill battle coming for it.
This album is set in a really interesting yet sanctimoniously depressing point in The Strokes discography. Taking almost two years to actually finish, tensions were beyond high in the band. That tension could be pointed to a number of things that we as the audience could never fully understand, but if I had to take a shot in the dark, i'd say maybe it could be due to relationships in the ... read more
A slight return to form for The Strokes, however there are a couple issues with this album in my eyes. Ill start with the positives, the highs on here are really damn great! “Manchu Picchu” and “Under Cover of Darkness” are super great singles and openers, and “Life Is Simple In the Moonlight” is one of the best closers they’ve put out since their debut. I also really like the aesthetic of this album, as it feels like their most experimental album in ... read more
More Strokes. Who I love! I usually stroke alone, but I stroked with others during this album.
First time they successfully altered their formula for the entirety of an album without just reverting back to is this it. It’s not a dramatic change to their formula, nor is it perfect. The album has its issues but I think it’s successful. It still draws a lot from is this it, but it doesn’t feel desperate nor does it feel like an empty shell of its former self. A nice change of pace, solid listen.
this album is very hated but it's honestly my favorite Strokes album, it's very experimental and i feel like the genre differs from a song to another which i love. great album
1 | Machu Picchu 3:29 | 91 |
2 | Under Cover of Darkness 3:55 | 92 |
3 | Two Kinds of Happiness 3:42 | 76 |
4 | You're So Right 2:33 | 73 |
5 | Taken For a Fool 3:23 | 86 |
6 | Games 3:51 | 73 |
7 | Call Me Back 3:02 | 75 |
8 | Gratisfaction 2:59 | 79 |
9 | Metabolism 3:00 | 77 |
10 | Life Is Simple In the Moonlight 4:15 | 89 |