Fades in Slowly

This was the band that made me start to feel like I was getting old. Long gone were the years when I opened the NME and knew every band that they were writing about. To be fair, I’d just moved abroad and my first little ‘un had just been born in 2001, but nevertheless it came as a bit of a shock when the album of the year was announced and it was by a band I hadn’t even heard of. Wake up calls are good once in a while, especially when they are as good as the Strokes.

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="375" caption="Don't get your hair cut, that's an order"][/caption]

For me, the biggest crime any act can make is to consist of style over substance. A lot, well a few at least, aim this accusation at the band, and I can understand why.

They clearly have a style which they adhere to, knew exactly which bands they were mimicking and are probably under as strict a set of instructions about what clothes to wear and which poses to adopt in photo shoots as Marilyn Manson or anyone on these reality TV program contestants. That being said, they overcome this by really delivering on the substance side of the equation, as their first and indeed only Peel session shows.

Their 2001 opus ‘This is it’ has just been chosen as the NME album of the decade (my apologies on behalf of the publication to anyone who makes a great album in the next month or so) and I couldn’t be less surprised. The list of 50 albums makes for fairly uninspired reading, reflecting on the scope of the NME far more than on the quality of the music of the decade. None of that is the fault of the Strokes, so sit back and enjoy this belter of a session.

The Strokes session: June, 2001

Track list

The Modern Age
Hard To Explain
Barely Legal
Someday

Lineup

Nick Valensi (Guitar)
Nikolai Fraiture (Bass)
Julian Casablancas (Vocals)
Albert Hammond Jr (Guitar)
Fabrizio Moretti (Drums)

Listen now…

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