Five Of The Best: The Strokes

Image: The Strokes 

The downside of producing perhaps the most glorious and holiest of debut indie rock albums is setting a ridiculously Everest sized precedent for the remainder of your recording career. 

Is This It, The Strokes 2001 debut, indeed forged that exact obstacle. How could they achieve such godly heights so consistently across one single album?. 

What started out as a three track EP, The Modern Age, was initially recorded in just three days to earn the band some exposure on New York clubbing scene. In turn it sewed the seeds for one of the greatest introductions to the world of all time.  

Their first short tour of the UK during this period was attended by figures like members of Radiohead and Kate Moss. Hype was immensely accelerating around a band that was delivering a sound contrary to what was being delivered by similarly minded outfits at the time. 

Their tightly wound rhythms, laser beam guitar parts and Julian's smoking hot and sparsely off-kilter songwriting attributed to the success of the hook heavy album. It ignited the spark for a generation of indie rock bands in the noughties' that was commonly referred to as "the indie landfill".

There's no doubt that we could sift through Is This It? and thread together five unanimously awesome hits. Many would dismiss any other album bar the odd song, but there's much more to The Strokes legacy that touched on the new wave phase, pop and more recently electro.

Baring that in mind we cast our golden rod and picked out five of the best from across the band's sprawling back catalogue   

Someday (2001)

If you were to plummet your finger onto an archetypal Strokes sound, Albert Hammond Jr and Nick Valensi's alchemy of guitar notes stroked on 'Someday' would be it.  

When Julian's breezy cool operatic passes verses like, "Oh Maya says i'm lacking depth/I will do my best" it is truly magnificent, and quite frankly we couldn't think of a better introduction to the world.  

Last Nite (2001)

From New York to Northampton, this track was, and still is an essential staple in any sweat drenched indie hot box. 

We're almost certain that the tunnelling finger play of Albert Hammond Jr and yeti-sized hooks that melt into your brain are responsible for the majority of skinny jean crotch rips for a hefty chunk of that decade.

Reptilia (2003)

Oh that fucking riff, is there anything more mesmerising and air guitar worthy? Not that we condone air guitars, unless drunk of course, but this was special. It landed on 2003 slice Room On Fire, where they dropped Is This It producer Gordon Raphael and opted for Nigel Godrich.  

Heart In A Cage (2006)

Arriving on their third album First Impressions Of Earth, it signalled their first foray into a more pop directed approach. 'You Only Live Once' and 'Juicebox' offer hurly contenders for a spot on our ladder, but it's the spiralling guitar parts and Casablanca's effortless vocal harking Is This It era Strokes that does it for us.   

Under Cover Of Darkness (2011) 

Following a band hiatus which most notably saw Albert Hammond Jr embark on a series of solo albums, including Casablancas and Moretti in projects of their own, the band returned to the studio in 2010.

Angles was the resultant force, an ultimately enjoyable album that was delivered with the same in-consumable amount of expectation that's plagued The Strokes throughout their almighty tenure. 

This song was perhaps reminiscent of their decade of success, Julian verses "Everybody's been singing the same song for ten years", the video references 'Last Nite' and there's a clip in the video from 'You Only Live Once'. 

Read: Moments of small insanity with Gordon Raphael (interview)