the strokes go postmodern?

 Hey blog. Today I'll be offering my thoughts on the new Strokes single. I'm not really assessing if its good or bad, just applying some critical analysis!

Let's start with the cover art:

Cute! Retro! Something I could probably make this on Canva! Oh wait! I made something EXACTLY like this (vintage ad-inspired) for a final last semester! Run me my check Julian.....

Or don't. Whatever. I'm chill like that. Anyways, it's undeniable that there is a clear vintage influence here, which informed my listening going in. After twelve seconds of an upbeat, snappy intro, you're hit with Julian crooning with a noticeable Autotune thing going on. Almost jolts you out of whatever expectations you had going in. Interesting.

Julian delivers some on-the-nose lines about late stage capitalism and our current political climate- 

    "The worse reality gets the less you wanna hear about it

      Solidarity can be difficult

      When you got cool stuff to lose"

Yeah Jules, we know everything kinda sucks right now but I love my cool stuff and am unwilling to give it up. Can you just make some peppy songs that don't address current societal ills? God, artists these days. 

Julian goes on to tell a tale of leaving a high-speed, big city life behind in favor of a productive country life, but by the end of the song, he concedes that he misses the city, specifically, the shopping malls. Lyrically, there's something very Nothing But Flowers about this. 

Besides the alienating autotune, there's something else significant happening musically here- 

Oh wait. Sorry. I'm getting a call. 

It was Joe Strummer and Mick Jones. They don't want any sampling credit (because they're punk like that), but they do want listeners to draw connections to their 1979 song, Lost in the Supermarket.

Ok fine I made that up. I'm the one who selfishly wants you to draw connections between Going Shopping and Lost in the Supermarket. I mean, I feel like the song titles alone bear some semblance. Although Julian possesses disdain for the depersonalizing store/mall, he finds himself bored by country life, and tempted back into the same alienating store that Strummer finds himself in, where he is unable to find a "guaranteed personality". 

 

After I initially drew this comparison, and asked my sister and dad for their thoughts, I came to the conclusion that this similarity simply had to have been intentional. The Strokes are no strangers to The Clash- they have a notable cover of Clampdown which is the B-side of The End Has No End single. Also- theres this anecdote, relayed in Lizzy Goodman's legendary book, Meet Me In The Bathroom:

Like any other cognizant musican, The Strokes' knowledge of the geist naturally includes The Clash. Which makes me think that there is something purposeful about these similarities. I don't have a perfect way to describe it, but something vaguely postmodern or ironic seems to fit. 

Actually, there's something that captures the feel pretty well: the end credit scene of White Noise, Noah Baumbach's adaptation of Don DeLillo's novel. The film jolts you in and out of 80s-era absurdities, that seem possible for the time period, but possess an element of permeating covert uncanniness. The film obscures any explict political message by presenting us with various spectacles (and also an AWESOME lcd sounsystem song) to witness instead. 

Certainly, there are similarities between the dramatic irony in the film, and the dramatic irony of The Strokes' recent Coachella performance, where Julian delivers a brief monologue about an impending draft in an 'Amazon Crime' shirt to a disinterested crowd who seems more interested in them 'playing the hits' than any prescient political commentary.

Now, I'm making hasty generalizations about the crowd at this performance (status, wealth, brand associations etc), but there seems to be some sentiment online about how popular music artists should engage in politics. Let me be clear- it is fundamentally impossible to fully separate an artist (or culture in general) from politics. Even if I'm not delivering some Seeger-style folk song, my preferences and tendencies have still been shaped by the conditions I grew up in. (Yes, Kamala Harris' 'You think you just fell out of a coconut tree' line is applicable here) And for The Strokes, that looks like a privileged city upbringing, where inherited social capital eased any barriers to entry. I think the band has been in the game long enough to take some critical distance though. They were dealing with the nepo baby hate (symptom of capitalism, by the way) before it was as common as it is today, and at this Coachella performance, demonstrated some irony by delivering a timely political message to a seemingly apathetic crowd. That's what I get from this whole thing, at least. 

I think similar conclusions can be drawn from Going Shopping. Rather than lamenting about the ills of The Modern Age, I believe that this song purposefully makes use of gratuitious Autotune, and draws notable similarities to Lost in the Supermarket to demonstrate that our current socio-political situation is not unprecedented, and that this battle has, in fact, been fought before. Instead of asking ourselves What Ever Happened? to a political system that seemed to be Under Control, newly mobilized should listen when The Adults Are Talking to realize that these Games are not new, and that generations must not work Alone, but Together, for the best chance at a Happy Ending. 

I have some more thoughts about this that aren't coherent enough to type up yet. Anyways, excited for the new album! Reality Awaits!