The Strokes - Juicebox

Fri 21st Oct, 2005 in Music Reviews

Cast your minds back to January 21, 2004. It was another hot Australian summer and plenty of cold beverages were consumed. Personally, this date was special because it included watching the band touted as ”New York’s finest” at the Hordern Pavilion. I have fond memories of The Strokes performing material from their first two albums Is This It and Room On Fire. Other memories include seeing a friend smuggle a camera into the venue only for her to wind up getting tangled up with Julian (Casablancas, lead singer) at the end of the set. Do you have any idea how funny it is to see two large, butch bouncers wrestling about in an attempt to disentangle a lead singer and a fan? Funny shit.

Back to The Strokes, fast forward to 2005 and the release of the new song Juicebox, from the album First Impressions of Earth to be released next year. “Raw” and “Heavy” are two words commonly being brandished about by listeners responding to the new song. 

NME had the band featured as a cover story recently. Julian claimed that they wanted to try a medley of new things. Meatier guitar parts were attributed by Nick Valensi (guitars) as being influenced by Muse, System Of A Down and AC/DC. Additionally, Julian sighted The The and Queen as influencing their new sound. Other people have whispered names such as The Vines and Nirvana as bands The Strokes are imitating. Now we could stay here name-dropping all day, provided we don’t use overly used terms such as eclectic or Beatlesque. Thankfully, Juicebox fails to contain such clichéd variables.

A mathematical equation was proffered by NME in summarising the new album: The Strokes’ Is This It – Iggy Pop’s The Passenger ÷ Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata + weird arrangements by The The and Queen x Muse’s Operatic Choruses - a bit of reggae and a sprinkle of Latin music – caring about what’s cool x Stomp x The Strokes’ Room On Fire and combine with extremely loud volume = First Impressions Of Earth.

Now for those of you who aren’t mathematically inclined geeks let’s talk some more about Poppers or Juicebox. There’s Nikolai’s heavy bass, which can be likened to a superhero theme. Also, Julian’s vocals are no longer distorted but are confronting as he yells, “Why don’t you come over here? We got a city to love.”

The track fuses novel, strange arrangements with other parts reminiscent of The Strokes’ old-school sound. Older fans brace yourselves for the confrontational assault you receive upon your first listen. It appears the boys are set to try something somewhat different and thankfully not regurgitate old material in a slightly updated way. And if fans of Is This It feel a little isolated by the recent, peculiar sounds just think and cast your minds back to 2004…