Comedown Machine accomplishes in 38 minutes what nearly a decade and a half of backlash and schadenfreude could not: make the Strokes look like total nerds. This isn’t so much of a revelation as it the culmination of what’s been happening ever since First Impressions of Earth. They got one classic album and another great one exhausting a sound that evoked decades of New York squalor chic through indestructible songs and contradictory images: garages where Orange amps are parked next to Benzes, a trust-funder’s highrise apartment lousy with beer cans and leather jackets, dive bars frequented by models and rock stars. Everything since has taken cues from styles more associated with parents’ basements, musty vinyl shops, and convention centers: dinky synth-pop, surf rock, prog and the weird science of countless 1980s New Wave bands. This flipping of the script can actually be seen as a canny move, recasting the Strokes as lovable underdogs: where they once defined effortless cool, the deeply uncool Comedown Machine smacks of effort.
That goes a long way towards making Comedown Machine more immediately appealing than their last two records; the Strokes sound like they’re genuinely trying here. The functional cover art of Comedown Machine suggests some kind of mixtape the Strokes made for themselves, 11 songs that turn out like 11 different genre experiments viewed through the unmistakable prism of their inhuman rhythmic precision and pinched EQ’ing. There are a couple of Is This It? throwbacks (“All The Time,” “50/50”) that turn out to be among the least satisfying things here, too flabby to fit into those same jeans from a decade prior. Otherwise, you get elastic funk (“Tap Out”), dubby dream-pop (“80s Comedown Machine”), unidentifiable Latin-tinged Casio presets (“One Way Trigger”) and plenty of soft-rock sheen that creates an ouroboros effect of the Strokes sounding like Phoenix when they were trying to sound like the Strokes.
Credit where it’s due: the guys sound like they’re having fun again. At least that’s the gist you get from the numerous, in-studio “throwaway” moments: the flubbed soloing that introduces the otherwise vise-tight “Tap Out” and the labored laughing that closes out “Slow Animals” only take up a few seconds, but they reinforce the idea that this isn’t Julian Casablancas’ de facto solo project despite it sounding closer to Phrazes For The Young than any Strokes LP*.* But you also sense that the rest of the band getting antsy, issuing challenges to themselves to keep things interesting. Albert Hammond’s solos are charmingly anachronistic, a throwback to when tidy solos were a regular occurrence in three-minute pop songs. But they still can’t shake their tendency to stubbornly hammer at awkward riffs (“Happy Ending”) and clunky chord changes ("Welcome To Japan").
Still, the limitations of Comedown Machine's protracted diversity all come back to Casablancas, a man with wide range as a listener and extremely narrow range as a musician. In both lyrics and tone, he’s best at playing the laconic cad: So when he barks “you’re going too fast” on “All the Time” as a callback to “Reptilia” and the hotseat urgency of Room On Fire, it sounds forced. On the opposite end, the highlight of Comedown Machine is when he asks “What kind of asshole drives a Lotus?” on “Welcome to Japan”; you half expect him to do the “this guy!” routine as a punchline.
That’s the kind of thing Casablancas does better than anyone. Unfortunately, most of Comedown Machine finds him doing anything but that. “Tap Out” features at least two of Casablancas' most elegant melodies, but his wispy coo turns them into mush. When he takes the opposite tack to channel his inner Tom Waits, he doesn’t fare much better; no one was asking what the Strokes would've sounded like in the Victrola era, but "Call It Fate Call It Karma" answers it anyway. If this all smacks of effort, at least they are not taking the easy way out. It’s the 10th anniversary of Room On Fire and in light of what came after, a reissue would surely bring more praise than the initial Is This It? Yes It Is assessment. Or, they could’ve followed the lead of fellow fashion plate/occasional hitmaker Suede and made it a point to sound like their old selves after a long, dry spell.
Still, it’s frustrating for anyone who still puts stock in the idea that the Strokes could and should be one of America’s biggest rock bands. After all, they feel like stars even if the numbers don’t back it up and reigning champs like the Black Keys have about as much charisma and sex appeal as a General Tire. Of course, Black Keys are writing much better songs than the ones on Comedown Machine and if the Strokes seem unfashionable in 2013, that's the true reason.
