After a few years lost in a haze of dance music, I heard the Stokes playing loud in HMV's Oxford Circus and it was my return to rock 'n' roll. Oddly despite all the plaudits this band get for this release, I rate the 2nd and 3rd albums much higher. But you're not alone, I hear this a lot about them - for me, the first three album still have the ability to give me goosebumps...
I don't hate the album but I don't think it's a classic. I bought it on vinyl and still have it and play it every now and then. The UK Rough Trade vinyl does sound good.
Just picked up the album on Amazon, vinyl for $13. Never owned a legitimate version of this, always a bootleg dating back to when it came out. It's a strong 4/5 for me... I want to pick up Room On Fire as well... after that, I struggled with the next 2 and gave up... Maybe things are are different 10 years later... however Is This It was one of the best albums of the 2000s for me.
I think the main strength of the album is that it sounds effortless and the riffs are to-the-point and addictive. It’s not about tension and any of that. It’s supercatchy and barebones. It’s also sequenced well (not frontloaded with the ‘hits’) and it’s a little over half an hour of all killer, no filler.
Anyone else think there's a chance we get a 20th anniversary set for Is This It? They could include, at the very least: LP1 - ALBUM REMASTERED (UK track list with NYC Cops) Cover would be the now-canon US fractal cover. Inner sleeve would be UK black glove cover. LP2 - B-SIDES When It Started Alone Together (home recording) Is This It (home recording) *(Maybe a couple more home recordings/demos here) Last Night (live) Soma (live) Try Your Luck (live) Take It Or Leave It (live) LP3 - LIVE CONCERT (2002 tour) 7" - THE MODERN AGE EP
Could do, sort of lacking b-sides though for extras however. I remember when they first arrived on the scene they were mocked in some quarters for only having twelve songs.
Bought the Modern Age EP on a whim at Amoeba Berkeley when it came out. I loved it and played it to everyone at college. At the time it felt wonderful and fresh. I loved Is This It? and still have my UK Rough Trade record. I saw them on that tour at The Fillmore and still have that wonderful Shepard Fairey Mickey Mouse poster framed above my setup. The show was underwhelming. They’re not great live in my opinion. Then Room on Fire came out and it just felt like more of the same and I moved on. Recently I got the VMP Room on Fire reissue and I fell in love with it. I prefer it to the first album now. They were the perfect band for that time and I will always have fond memories of it.
Yeah, i'd agree with this analysis. It's more obvious 20 years on, but 20 years ago it was the beginning of the end in the mainstream and the genre was looking for a saviour in The Strokes, as it found 10 years earlier with Nirvana. There's not many rock band albums that are lauded as classics post this one, particularly debut albums. Maybe the Arctic Monkeys or Hot Fuss. Is This It tends to be thought of as Nevermind for the new millenium and to many it was. I never really got it.
The New Abnormal is a great album. Sounds good after some laptop-level production on a couple of albums, and some really strong songs on there.
We got the glove cover in the UK. Whenever I see the fractal cover, I always think it doesn't suit the music at all. Never understood why they chose that!
It's a good question as the covers are night and day from one another. I don't think they fit together side by side, but on the other hand, I do think the fractal cover fits in more with the band's subsequent album art. But truthfully, I like both covers. Being in the states, I'm just used to the US one is all.
I'm a big fan of Angles, but Rubin's production is just so much nicer sounding than Gus Oberg's. The New Abnormal feels cohesive in the same way Is This It and Room on Fire do....whereas Angles and Comedown Machine are all over the place sonically...I found it interesting that in their YouTube chat with Rubin, it was revealed that Julian had sent Rubin demos "ten years ago" (so that must have been demos for the Angles album), and Rubin decided to pass on producing that record!
Not in the UK, Europe or Asia, it isn't. Literally "just" the US, Canada and some countries in S. America. The original cover is iconic, which isn't specific to the UK but the world (!) - the later US release not so much.
Yeah, it's strange how there are differences. I guess in the other territories, it's the "glove" cover on all the streaming services? I don't know. If they ever do an anniversary re-release, it'll be interesting how they handle the cover art. Maybe it would be a box set with the "glove" image on the cover, even in the US. I really meant to just initiate a conversation about a potential 20th Anniversary release, and not get into a debate about the covers.
For me "the glove" is the only "true" cover for "Is This It", it's iconic, it's identifiable, it's great. I still remember how I saw it first, in a store on release day. The US sleeve is slightly anonymous. And I'm saying this as someone who usually went for US pressings at the time this album came out. But a box set? Well, Julian already did mega boxsets in 2009 so who knows....
Obviously living in the UK I found the hype to be almost overwhelming at the time so I didn't really give Is This It a fair shake. My opinion on it hasn't really changed,it's a decent but not classic album. The likes of New York City Cops,Hard To Explain and The Modern Age are excellent but then you have songs like the title track,Alone Together and Trying Your Luck which have always felt like filler to me. It's undoubtedly an important album though and it's important to the 00's as Nevermind was to the 90's but I've always felt that Turn On The Bright Lights by Interpol was the true classic of the era.
It is worth mentioning that the album was first released in Australia — with the glove artwork — at the end of July 2001, to capitalise on the band’s recent live dates in the country. There was an export ban, though, as the record company wanted to maintain the hype/anticipation, particularly in the U.K., where the album wasn’t scheduled to be released until the end of August. I recently came across an Australian CD copy in a U.K. charity shop, so someone must have really wanted it at the time, and found a way around the export ban. I saw the band live four times before the U.K. album release, so I was happy to listen to my (and others’) recordings over that summer, until the album finally dropped. One of the shows I saw was the notorious King Tut’s gig in Glasgow, where Fab Moretti fell down the stairs afterward, and subsequently had to pull out of the rest of the tour. Earlier in the evening, I met Fab on those same stairs, and gave him my promo poster for The Modern Age EP, which he promptly returned to me, signed by the entire band. Unfortunately, the poster was destroyed several years later, in the flood that followed Hurricane Katrina. Anyway, the glove artwork is the iconic one, IMO. The U.S. release came later, and there wasn’t the same initial buzz about the band over there as there was in the U.K.; it took longer for them to break through in their home country. I was in a unique position to witness this, as an early fan from the U.K., who moved to the U.S. in November 2001. I subsequently saw the band play a club in Jackson, MS, in January 2002, and a theatre in New Orleans, LA, in November of that year. The U.S. was finally catching up with the U.K. by that point. Here are my ticket stubs from those heady days:
They are one of my favorite bands of the 21st Century and, for me at least, there is no drop off after the first two albums.
This is great! Unfortunately being in Germany there was no way to see the band pre-hype. But I remember harassing the owner of a local store early in 2001 into somehow getting me the "Modern Age" ep: "The Strokes? Who?" Later that very same year he suddenly thought I was really well informed. In fact even in Germany anyone could simply pick up the NME. Or at least browse the review section in an international bookstore. Back then I thought this could be a cool new band in the vein of Clinic. Which I love(d).
I first got wind of them in January 2001, and bought the U.K. EP of The Modern Age on the day of release. I remember taking it home and playing it multiple times in a row, jumping around the living room like a teenager (I was 30 at the time). You could feel the U.K. hype growing almost weekly throughout 2001, culminating in the album release in late August. It felt really special to be a part of that. There was a similar hype that summer for The White Stripes, who I also saw at the 300-capacity King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut, in Glasgow. I can’t remember exactly when the Edinburgh tickets went on sale (April-ish, probably), but I do remember going to the ticket booth in the basement of HMV, and the guy behind the counter saying, “Who?” A bit like your story when asking for the EP. By the time the gigs rolled around, in June, the hype was huge, and the tickets the hottest in town. To the band’s credit, they stuck with the original, tiny venues, when they could have easily “upgraded” to larger halls. A friend of mine knew the promoter of the Edinburgh gig, so I got to attend the aftershow party with the band. Most of them were too cool for school, but Fab was really friendly. My mate bought Julian a beer, but Casablancas wouldn’t touch it; he was paranoid it had been spiked.
I liked this album, and I say this as hater of any modern music, even if its good, until I listen to it and like it! I saw them at Nottingham Arena UK in 2006 and they were one of the worst bands I've seen live (IN MY OPINION) however. Flat and a bit boring, and as mentioned elsewhere, I thought they were phoning the performance in. To be fair, I had a massive argument with my then girlfriend that night and went to Rock City and got hammered- so my memory may not be totally correct
I wonder if there are many outtakes, alternate versions of Is This It songs that could be on a deluxe reissue...I wonder if they every played through a cover or two to warm up in the studio or anything else caught on tape in those early sessions.
