When The Strokes turned down Albert Hammond Jr’s songs for their latest album, he set out to create his own. Yours To Keep features ten tracks and clocks in at just over half an hour long. The influences on this album are audible – Grandaddy, The Flaming Lips and Pavement - making it sound a lot different to what The Strokes have done in the past.
First up, we have Cartoon Music For Super Heroes. It comes across like a lullaby, lulling you into a sense of trust and comfort. All thoughts of this album being anything like Hammond Jr’s other band fly out the window at this point. It ambles along dazedly and as you fight the urge to curl up into the foetal position and fall asleep the song ends and the album truly begins.
You tap your foot in time with In Transit and let the second song on the album take its toll on you. It’s one of the most beautiful songs on the album. The arrangement of two guitars, drums, bass, keyboard and Hammond Jr’s vocals is breathtaking. It’s also the name of The Strokes 2001 tour video.
For Yours To Keep, Hammond Jr enlisted the help from Josh Lattenzie on bass and Matt Romano on drums. Guest appearances on the album came from the direction of Julian Casablancas (The Strokes), Sean Lennon, Ben Kweller, Jody Porter (Fountains Of Wayne) and the Strokes manager Ryan Gentles.
Blue Skies tugs at the appropriate heart strings and you fall deeper into the trance that has already been laid. There’s something about Hammond Jr’s voice that fills you with a range of emotions. You feel enlightened and happy to sad and full of anguish within seconds. It’s ever changing seasons, makes it autumnal. You wouldn’t have thought that the guitarist of The Strokes could come up with a song like this, but the surprise is a welcome one. And one that we won’t forget in a hurry.
The same surprise meets us when Scared kicks in. It’s good to see that Hammond Jr likes to change his style a lot. The listener would find it hard to get bored of this album with this many mood changes. It starts off sounding like new wave rock, then turns into a mind-boggling psychedelic trip in the chorus.
As many of us have come to ridicule the fact that one of The Strokes has branched out on his own, we have been slapped in the face with this album. It’s a lot better than any of us thought, in its consistently bittersweet, frequently beautiful tour de force. You may find it hard to love, if you go looking for another Strokes album, but if you stay away from that nametag and listen to it without expectations, it’ll be an album you’ll grow to love quite easily.
