So I've heard the future of what may or may not be (mostly depending on this upcoming album) the most important band of our time. I'm confused, intrigued and scared. "Juicebox" is the new strokes song and it's wierd spacey, with double tracked vocals a bunch of hooks and a an aggressive sense of dynamics that is a bit unnerving to me.
Important rock nerd detail:
The Third Album- The third album is where bands go in one of three directions 9 out of Ten times. Due to the nature of the Strokes career arc they are unlikely to be the exception, The exceptions tend to be uber-underground or uber quirkie bands who take forever to get popuar (Sonic Youth, REM, The Greatful Dead, Pink Floyd). The three directions are simply placed into archetypes. The first is that the band releases an album not entirely different than the two prior (Ramones and AC/DC are the biggest examples of this), after this move any musical growth tends to be temporary and greeted with growns from your audience). The second and more admirable step is to reach a zenith of artistic merit by rewiring your sound in ways no one could have imagined (Radiohead's Ok Computer and The Clash's London Calling fall into this paradigm, nuff said). The third which can sometimes be confused with the second, is you rewire your sound in a way that while perhaps succesful commercially for an album or so can alienate your entire audience (Pearl Jam's Vitalogy). These albums aren't necassarily bad just not good for creating career archs.
So I'm scared you see I've loved the Strokes with a level of fan-boy worship that is unhealthy. But ya know I'll keep my fingers crossed.
