Review Summary: Despite the 80's synthesiser experimentations, ‘Comedown Machine’ has at least provided The Strokes faithful with a set of solid songs and has exceeded the criteria of not becoming a boring Strokes album.
Fans have watched The Strokes disintegrate right before their eyes. After their stellar debut album ‘Is This It’, the albums have been increasingly worse as the years go by with 2011’s ‘Angles’ being the latest mediocre failure. They have produced lacklustre shows, with the most worrying being Reading 2012, where they were outshined by Pulp and had to rely on Pulp singer Jarvis Cocker to drag them out the dumps. Despite The Strokes kick starting indie revival, they have been surpassed by bands they have inspired such as The Arctic Monkeys.
The album starts with the track ‘Tap Out’. ‘Tap Out’ is influenced by Destiny’s Child, with the melody of their song ‘Bootylicious’ being the melody for Nick Valensi’s and Albert Hammond, Jr’s guitars. ‘Tap Out’ reiterates Casablancas’ new found love for keyboards and is a highly danceable song which showcases interplay between the guitars and bass along with Casbalancas’s high octaves.
The next track is ‘All the Time’, which was the first single released for the album. The song features a thumping drum beat from Fabrizio Moretti and melodic guitar and is probably the only track on the album which would be considered to be a traditional Strokes number .‘One Way Trigger’ meanwhile is clearly based on Japanese band A-Ha’s ‘Take On Me’ and has Julian Casablancas crooning hysterically in scarily high falsetto, although the song has an uplifting and tender tone.
Meanwhile, ‘Welcome to Japan’ features Casablancas crooning again and features Casablancas sardonically questioning ‘what kind of asshole drives a Lotus?’ and is possibly the best track on the record. The song is one of the standouts in a relatively mixed album and features a Nikolai Fraiture bass line which launches into Franz Ferdinand esque disco. The hypnotic ‘80’s Comedown Machine’ emphasises the fact that this album is influenced by 80s disco albums and is a subversive slow track stretching to almost 6 minutes, twice the number of an average Strokes song.
‘50/50’ is another satisfying song on the album, with its frenzied riffing which is reminiscent of ‘Reptilia’ with its ferocity and intensity. It seems destined to be a future single and despite Casablancas sounding like a wounded whale, the fuzzed vocal effects work as they did in ‘Is This It’. ‘Slow Animals’ has a great bittersweet chorus and along with ‘Welcome to Japan’ is one of the best tracks on the album. The song features delicate half whispered vocals teetering on falsetto and the song has restrained and understated verses.
‘Partners in Crime’ is a song that hardcore Strokes fans will enjoy. The song has a never ending guitar and with no recognisable chorus and with its tremolo picking sci-fi guitars, it is an unusual Strokes number. ‘Chances’, a ballad written by Casablancas, is slow paced and has an electronic feel to the song, with Casablancas continuing to sing in his newly discovered falsetto vocals. ‘Happy Endings’ is a soft and melodic track with guitar licks being warped into an 80's style synthesizer beeps, keeping up the 80s oriented feel to ‘Comedown Machine’.
The closing track the cheesy sounding ‘Call it Fate, Call it Karma’ has a bass sounding piano and features gluey guitar over 50s pop production.It is reminiscent of a Tom Waits parody and the song is a more muttered, muffled abstract version of ‘I’ll Try Anything Once’ and is quite an awkward and bizarre track and makes for a disappointing end to the album.
Download: All the Time, 50/50,Slow Animals, Welcome to Japan, Partners in Crime
