"Bohemia is nothing more than the little country in which you do not live. If you try to obtain citizenship in it, at once the court and retinue pack the royal archives and treasure and move away beyond the hills." --O. Henry
"When they said promises, they meant promises." --The Strokes
That Julian Casablancas, Strokes lead singer, heir to the Casablancas model agency fortune and dumpling-faced Spin cover boy has emerged as a bona fide cultural force at 27 is not just a bit surprising. The Strokes were supposed to be the pretty, shallow ones, the market was supposed to have declared them Officially Disposable, their music was supposed to be a faint echo of older, better, cooler New York bands like the Velvet Underground. It is a sad trap for Casablancas and The Strokes that as rock and roll enters its fifth decade there is always some Rock Official (how's that for an oxymoron) to remind us all of when someone did it better.
And yet with the new "First Impressions Of Earth" The Strokes sidestep this generational quicksand and pull off the Houdini-esque act of slipping out from under the mighty weight of the recent past. First Impressions is not just a great rock and roll record by a young man at the height of his creativity, it is a tale of fame and its great powers and great pains that also serves as shorthand for the power and pain of youth itself. Casablancas is uniquely strong in his rejection of the sad Cobain-esque generational command that he wipe out or fuck off or waste it or just let go.
The Strokes recognize that the hedonism-and-heroin formula is fusty, atavistic and trite: "Because I don't feel good when I'm fucking around," Casablancas sings on the disc's wonderful "Heart In A Cage," "and I don't write better when I'm stuck in the ground." Wished away for so long, The Strokes show up on "First Impressions Of Earth" as big as life and twice as noisy. With this record they make a musical mark that is decidedly permanent and casually point out that they are going to be around long after their early detractors are dribbling senile drool in the Old Critics' Home.
Casablancas, born in 1978, is a part of Generation X, a group whose childhoods coincided with the decline of colonial imperialism, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War. The transition between colonialism and globalization is often seen as the separation line between Casablancas' generation and that of the Baby Boomers (who tend to try and erase this line wherever they see it drawn,) Casablancas, son of a notorious hedonist and ladies' man, builds many barricades against the past and its cliches on "First Impressions." "I don't want what you want, I don't feel what you feel" he crows. He makes his task even more explicit with a song entitled "Vision of Division."
Casablancas toils as a culture-worker in a society that prefers to reference a shopworn simulacra of youth culture than actually celebrate or even pay attention to the real talents and accomplishments of the young. This Baby Boomer-brand™ bohemia has been the inferior house brand for so long that it was only a matter of time before it was knocked over. In "Razorblade" Casablancas scissors himself off from the past, "I wish I could cut this rope," and then delivers the coup de grace in a taunting drawl: "Drop dead. I don't care. I won't worry."
That the generation prior to ours grew up during an era of colonization and manifest destiny seems to inform the strange proprietary attitude the now 50-something and older Boomers have toward youth culture. Rather than learning to pass the baton and actually transfer real ideals and ideas to the young, a Boomer cultural bureaucracy has grown up around youth culture, a bureaucracy that now assures that anything new is absorbed back into the nostalgia factory. Sadly, Casablancas also realizes it is too late for Boomer parents to blackmail him based on guilt. "We got Left, Left, Left, Left, Left, Left, Left," he sings, again in the anthemic "Heart In A Cage," referencing the hollow poses of the liberalism without courage he has inherited as much as his generation's latchkey abandonment.
Younger generations now suffer under a delusional, dollar-intensive colonization of the present by the past. The Strokes fire off a few encouraging rounds in the battle for the present in their masterful new release. In "Ask Me Anything" the band digs in for future battles, "I will fight to survive/I got nothing to hide." As a generation so far best known for our supposed apathy, this band recognizes it's time to seize the day. Perhaps anyone 40 and under would be wise to follow suit. How will you answer when your child asks, "Daddy, what did you do in the Time War?"
I hope the new Strokes album is half as interesting as your post. I saw them on Saturday Night Live a few weeks ago and was disappointed, but this sounds like an album that can only be appreciated live once you've absorbed the disk. I couldn't understand the lyrics the way he was singing on TV.
As I write, I'm listening to my MP3 player shuffling through all my incongruous musical tastes. Some new stuff (Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, New Pornographers, Postal Service, Fiona Apple) along with old stuff. I just happened to hear Aretha Franklin's version of Sam Cooke's "A Change is Gonna Come." Not wanting to sound like the sort of baby boom music listener you accurately caricature...but where is the "soul" music-equivalent of today? There's a whole dimension missing now compared to my day. We had the Beatles, Stones and Beach Boys, but also Otis Redding, the Four Tops and Stevie Wonder. All the newer bands, I like many of them, but it all seems to come from the head, not so much the heart. Maybe I just need to be enlightened.
Posted by: John Stodder | Monday, February 06, 2006 at 11:49 PM
I would never have given the new Strokes album a shot until this post.
Posted by: scott | Tuesday, February 07, 2006 at 09:03 PM