THE MODERN AGE
An archive of groundbreaking 21st century rock musicians & influencers
THE MODERN AGE An archive of groundbreaking 21st century rock musicians & influencers
Designed and curated by Olivia Alchek
For my dad, who introduced me to good music. And for my mom, who let me play that music on the ride to school.
Contents 11
Introduction A hello from the designer & curator of the book, what it’s about, and why she decided to make it.
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Arcade Fire The band that redefined Rock n’ Roll through their epic live performances, embracing the art of the album, and their unique, complex sound.
47
The Strokes A case for one of the most important rock bands of the 21st century, and how they mastered the art of revival and innovation.
79
Radiohead How a british rock group challenged the contstructs of a genre, reshaped the music industry, and transformed into an immediate legacy.
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Works Cited Citations of the research, written content, photographs, & references.
The Modern Age
Introduction
R
ock n’ Roll—a genre that developed as early
artist’s journey. The rise of social media has increased
as the 1950s has grown and progressed to
fanbases and cultivated closer relationships between a
become more than just a style of music—
band and their followers. Thus, we’re creating a repos-
it’s a culture and a revolution. Since its
itory for these current bands that we can look back on
beginning, we have praised the musicians
in the future.
that have made it great. The groundbreaking artists who built a new style of music filled with edge and atti-
What interested me the most while beginning this
tude, the passionate creators who challenged the way
project was the way we archive and celebrate artists
music was written and performed, and the immensely
of the past and present in different ways. We see epic
skilled masters who raised the bar on how to play an
books, documentaries, museum collections, etcetera,
instrument. Think the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, the Rolling
that document a band’s distant past, rather then an impressive present, or an ambitions future. Thus, I dedicated my senior Capstone to focusing on this concept.
volume I of our history of rock textbook.
Instead of studying the influencers from 30+ years ago,
However, rock n’ roll has evolved over the past 60 years,
be talking about in 30 years from now. The musicians
constantly reinventing itself. What began as classic
who are already pushing boundaries in the music indus-
rock has emerged into a wide group of subgenres and
try that we already know are important. This entire book
hybrids—blues rock, grunge, punk rock, electronic rock,
is a celebration of the past and a prediction of the future.
psychedelic rock, dance rock, art rock, and what is recently popular as of 2018, alternative rock and inde-
Much research and careful decision making went into
pendent (indie) rock. This evolution of an iconic genre
choosing the few bands featured in this book, as there
has brought about a new batch of groundbreaking
are a plethora of musicians that continue to make big
creators—ones who are pushing the boundaries as
strides in the field. My main requirement for this was
much as their iconic predecessors.
the epic factor—who has taken the most risks; developed die-hard, loyal fanbases; pushed the boundaries
This new group of music influencers, while still in the
of artful album composing; who has overall redefined
emergence of their careers, are already shaking the
what it means to be a rock musician. Arcade Fire, the
infrastructure of the music industry, innovating sound
Strokes, and Radiohead exhibit these qualities and so
technology, and pushing the boundaries of what genre
much more. These are the masters among our next
even means. They’re making meaningful art that’s cap-
wave of music influencers.
tivating the world. And because we’re in the middle of the digital age, there has been no easier time to share and spread music, as well as document every part of a
Olivia Alchek, designer and curator
11
This book was curated, written, and designed by Olivia Alchek in 2018. All discography summaries are courtesy of Rolling Stone, and each chapter article is cited with their original author.
I focused on the groundbreaking creators that we’ll still
Introduction
Stones, Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie—the list could go on. These are the main figures that we learn about in
From selling out concert arenas to grabbing Grammys for Album of the Year, Arcade Fire has redefined what it means to be an indie rock band. They have mastered and emphasized the art of the album by creating cohesive, thematic works with songs that cross-reference and comment on one another, gathering depth and resonance as a whole. Arcade Fire has taken the components of their rock n’ roll roots and added their innovative spin— a plethora of orchestral instruments and Haitian rara are some of the many elements that qualify Arcade Fire as a groundbreaking band that will leave a lasting legacy.
The Modern Age
Arcade Fire
c. 2003——Montréal, Québec, Canada
Members/Win Butler, William Butler, Régine Chassagne, Richard Reed Parry, Jeremy Gara, Tim Kingsbury, Tim Kyle Influences/ Depeche Mode, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, The Clash, Sonic Youth, David Bowie, The Pixies, New Order, The Talking Heads, Pavement, Radiohead, Bruce Springsteen, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Hatian Rara
With their cathedrals of sound, this Montréal collective built a fiercely loyal fan base in the 2000s, a following that counted rock heroes like David Byrne and David Bowie as members. The band’s sound—a mix of slashed strings, blaring brass, pounded
decades prove that sometimes bigger is better.
Arcade Fire
percussion, and Win Butler’s spooked croon—was smart and dramatic enough to earn Springsteen comparisons, and the group’s five world-class albums from the last two
Arcade Fire is led by the husband-wife team of Win Butler (a Houston native who moved to Montréal after attending a New England boarding school to focus on music) and Régine Chassagne (daughter of Haitian refugees who has performed jazz and medievalmusic in the past). They met in 2003, when Chassagne was singing at an art exhibit, and it wasn’t long before they knew they wanted to make music together. Other partaicipants fell into their orbit and Arcade Fire was born. Jeremy Gara (drums), Richard Reed Parry (bass), Sarah Neufeld (violin), William Butler (keyboard) and Tim Kingsbury (guitar) all helped form the band’s unique sound. Most of the musicians play a variety of instruments on stage, and from the start Arcade Fire was been lauded for its ecstatic shows which often found band members at work in front of provocative video montages.
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DISCOGRAPHY A summary of the major works recorded by Arcade Fire from 2003-2018, including EPs and LPs, with exception of deluxe editions or single releases. The band’s discography has recieved many significant accolades, including Grammy Award for Album of the Year, and landing several spots on Rolling Stone’s respected celebratory archive lists—including “The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.”
i. Funeral 2004, Merge Records Loss, love, forced coming-of-age and fragile generational hope: Arcade Fire’s debut, Funeral, touched on all these themes as it defined the independent rock of this decade. Built on family ties and a rich, folkie musicality, the band made symphonic rock that truly rocked, using accordions and strings as central elements rather than merely as accessories, with a rhythm section that never let up. Songs like “Wake Up,” “Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)” and “Rebellion (Lies)” were simultaneously outsize and deeply personal, like the best pop. But for all its sad realism— “I like the peace in the backseat,” sings Chassagne at the album’s end, knowing the sense of security is utterly false—this was music that still found solace, and purpose, in communal celebration, as anyone who saw them live during this period can attest.
ii. Neon Bible 2007, Merge Records Arcade Fire’s second album, Neon Bible, is a set of songs that pushed the dour, bombastic sound to a darker, more baroque extreme. The album was cut in a Montreal church refashioned as recording studio. Though many of the tracks, like “Intervention” and “Black Wave/Bad Vibrations,” are fixated on a noble, Job-like suffering, the group never shy away from cathartic crescendos, with the Springsteen-esque “Keep the Car Running” and the charging “No Cars Go.” Like almost everything on Neon Bible, “No Cars Go” is excess with a point: We are drowning in the unspeakable and running out of air and fight.
iii. The Suburbs 2010, Merge Records The Suburbs is an album of vast, orchestral rock that locates the battle for the human soul amid big houses and manicured lawns. Winning the Grammy for Album of the Year in 2011, The Suburbs touches on nostalgia of the past in a complete package. Arcade Fire has truly mastered the art of the album. See the psychotic speed strings on “Empty Room,” the Crazy Horse rush of “Month of May,” the synth-pop disco of “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains).” Win Butler and his wife, Régine Chassagne, sing about suburban boredom, fear of change and wanting to have a kid of their own—always scaling their intimate confessions to arena-rock levels and finding beauty wherever they look.
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iv. Reflektor 2013, Merge Records
i. Funeral 2004
In Reflektor, Arcade Fire gives us seventy minutes of wide-screen dance rock co-produced by LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy. The Grammy-grabbing, high-aiming, arena-filling, indie-earnest family band does what The Clash, Talking Heads and so many others before it have done: reconnect rock to its dance-floor soul. There are flashes of glam, punk, disco, electro, dub reggae and Haitian rara. Being Arcade Fire, there’s also emo dramatics and cultural critiques (staring at screens: don’t do it!). But that ability to provoke actual feelings is what makes this great. And no release this
ii. Neon Bible 2007
year had a more entertaining rollout brouhaha.
v. Everything Now 2018, Columbia Records Arcade Fire deepens their grooves and confronts our toxic culture on Everything Now. More comfortable in their dancing shoes,
iii. The Suburbs 2010
Arcade Fire have it both ways: zeroing in on our modern malaise while taking inspiration from more concise dance-pop styles. The title track evokes Abba’s earworm laboratory, with dizzying melodic ascents and a curveball pygmy-flute solo by Afropop scion Patrick Bebey. “Put Your Money On Me” is the single most of electronic and organic sound that develops into cascading round of call-and-response vocals weaving around the center of an unshakeable pulse. On Everything Now, the post-Millennial hangover vibe first explored on 2010’s The Suburbs has curdled
iv. Reflektor 2013
Arcade Fire
impressive song on the record, a compulsively danceable hybrid
over into open disaffection with the plastic, commodified instantgratification culture of the social-media era.
Notable EPs: Arcade Fire EP 2003
v. Everything Now 2018
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Arcade Fire
19
The Modern Age
Arcade Fire: Redefining Rock n’ Roll & Their Lasting Legacy
A
rcade Fire’s seven members and a handful
band members wandering between the bus’s front and
of employees were all assembled on the
back sitting rooms, all the conversations kept returning
patio of the elegant Hôtel le Germain-
to music: Neil Young, Lady Gaga, the Beatles, Queen,
Dominion here on a July morning, await
Depeche Mode, Motown, Blondie, Phil Spector, Fugazi).
ing their tour bus amid haphazardly piled
luggage and instrument cases. When a band assistant,
The band is well aware of the possibilities opened up by
Chantal Vaillancourt, who has worked for Arcade Fire
the Internet. “Hope that something pure can last,” Mr.
since 2006, arrived to join them, they burst into “Happy
Butler sings on the band’s new album, The Suburbs. “A
Birthday” while she grinned and blushed. Their song
lot of things like that end up being memos to myself,”
started out as cheerfully ragged as any gathering of a
Mr. Butler said. “I keep trying to remember the good
dozen friends might sound. But not for long: by the last
things that get lost along the way and trying to apply
line it had become a ringing, full-fledged chorale, in
those lessons to the way the world actually is.”
all, musicians.
Arcade Fire’s songs, credited to the whole band but largely
The band had a much bigger audience the night before:
mingle the punky and the symphonic, the cryptic and
45,000 people at the Festival d’Été de Québec, Arcade
the heart-on-sleeve, the self-doubting and the anthe-
Fire’s largest crowd yet as a headliner (although the
mic, often with surging crescendos that make the tunes
group has faced even more listeners when sharing the
optimistic despite themselves. It’s both a stomping rock
bill at festivals). “That was insane, how many people
band and a mini-orchestra, complete with string sec-
were there,” said Win Butler, the band’s main singer and
tion, accordion or medieval hurdy-gurdy as needed.
lyricist, on the bus rolling toward another huge outdoor show, at the Ottawa Bluesfest.
The group performs in a hyperactive, partially planned rumpus. Even as it brings out the details of its elaborate,
It’s a scale that Arcade Fire—a self-guided indie-rock
multipart songs, it maintains what Will Butler—Win’s
band grown popular enough to sell out arenas—is learning
younger brother, and the band’s vintage-synthesizer
to deal with, intent on doing the right thing amid the
expert—calls “that amateur sheen, that nonprofessional
confusion and tacky temptations of the 21st-century
sheen that I treasure.”
music business. The band is simultaneously a throwback to a more heroic age of rock and a glimmer of hope in a
The band’s full-tilt stage shows started as a way of
digital era that forces musicians to fend for themselves.
demanding attention from aloof club audiences. “It
It prizes the sounds and methods of a disappearing era:
was like going out there and trying to tear your club
hand-played instruments, analog recording, albums
down,” said Richard Reed Parry, who plays bass and
made to be heard as a whole. (On the long drive, with
other instruments. “That kind of performance mode
21
This article was written by Jon Pareles, originally printed for the New York Times in July 2010 for the release of Arcade Fire’s forthcoming album, The Suburbs. The band has come out with two more LP’s since the time of this publication.
written by Win Butler and his wife, Régine Chassagne,
Arcade Fire
hymnlike four-part harmony. These friends are, above
Previous page: Arcade Fire’s promotional photo for Money + Love, a short music film. Below: press photo for Arcade Fire’s Saturday Night Live Performance in 2013 during the Reflektor tour.
The Modern Age
wasn’t conceived as, ‘Let’s do this 200 nights a year.’ But then, at a certain point, we can’t rethink this. It’s just how we’re doing it.” As Win Butler put it, “We’re sprinters who are running a marathon.” Despite its size, the Quebec concert was just part of a warm-up tour for The Suburbs, which is scheduled to be released on Tuesday. On Wednesday and Thursday the band is due in New York for two shows at Madison Square Garden and for an Internet-wide audience; Thursday’s show is to be streamed live on YouTube. In Quebec the band was still seeking a director to film the Madison Square Garden concerts; soon afterward it lined up Terry Gilliam, the Monty Python alumnus who made “Brazil.” Mr. Butler called him “one of my ultimate heroes.” The Garden shows are another conquest for a band that has barely been heard on commercial pop radio its debut at No. 2 on the Billboard album chart in 2007. According to Nielsen Soundscan Neon Bible has sold more than 439,000 copies in the United States, while
Arcade Fire
stations yet had its previous album, Neon Bible, make
the band’s 2004 debut album, Funeral, recently passed 504,000 copies—a megahit for an indie-rock band. Mac McCaughan, the founder of Merge Records (which releases Arcade Fire’s albums in the United States), said, “Since Funeral took off in such a crazy way, they’ve been in the position almost their whole recording career to not do anything they don’t want to do, which makes them pretty unique at this period of history.” He added, “One thing they talked about is this sense of being in it for the long haul and creating a sustainable life in music.” Arcade Fire built its following both in the time-tested way—incessant touring that carried it from house parties to giant festivals—and through the 21st-century word of mouth that multiplies across the Internet, where rave album reviews and euphoric concert reactions made 23
the group a nearly instant sensation.
Arcade Fire also makes its livelihood primarily through
they would be neatly deployed—often playing different
touring and album sales, not by extensively licensing
instruments—to rev up anew. After the set wound up
its songs to be used in commercials and soundtracks,
with “Rebellion (Lies)” from “Funeral,” the audience
as many musicians do to make up for disappearing CD
kept singing the “whoa-oh-oh” chorus until the band
sales. “Unless we develop major drug problems, we
returned for encores.
won’t license ‘Keep the Car Running’ for car commercials,” Mr. Butler said with a laugh. “We have our own little aesthetic rules.” The band licensed one song, “Wake Up,” to the N.F.L. for Super Bowl use and donated
Calmly and stubbornly, Arcade Fire is an old-school holdout in a digital world. “All of us had powerful experiences of pop music that was meaningful and had
all the proceeds for health care in Haiti after the earth-
something real about it,” said Win Butler, 30. “We
quake there; Ms. Chassagne is Haitian-Canadian.
definitely didn’t choose to be in the position that we’re
Rock’s older generation quickly embraced the band,
way, as close as something can get to people just
responding to songs that showed large ambitions rather
responding to the music and it getting bigger. I think
than hipster exclusivity. Arcade Fire was even endorsed
it’s important, if you’re going to do it, to do it for real.”
in, but I really think it’s come about in a pretty direct
by musicians as disparate as David Byrne and Bruce Springsteen, and eventually joined David Bowie and U2
Arcade Fire is determined to maintain the album as an
onstage. Compared to many indie-rock sensations, “we
artistic format, a physical object and an emotional
were a maturer band,” Will Butler said. “It was art-rock.
experience. On The Suburbs, as on the band’s two previ-
It wasn’t attitude rock.”
ous albums, the songs cross-reference and comment on one another, gathering depth and resonance as a whole.
Although Arcade Fire is based in Montreal, just two hours away from Quebec, its festival show was the
“I’ve been moved by albums a lot more than I’ve been
band’s first appearance in the provincial capital, and
moved by singles, and we’re an album band,” Mr. Butler
fans were overjoyed as the band knocked itself out.
said. “I’m not going to stop making albums because
Members bounced up and down, clapped hands, shook
of some fad of digital distribution. The idea that you
tambourines, stamped their feet, waved violin bows
just have to make bad cheap stuff and sell it cheaply
and bounded across the stage. Yet by the next song
because the format changes, to me, is crazy. It’s more important than ever to me to have the artwork and
What is the song “Wake Up” if not “Hey Jude” played in reverse, with the climactic group sing-along promoted to lead position and the humble pop-song portion punted off to the end?
the recording be as great as they can be.” The band took its time recording The Suburbs, working and reworking songs for much of a year in homes and studios, using 24-track tape. “I’d hate to take a guess at the budget,” Mr. Butler said, but he added that part of the cost was equipment the band would continue to use, including a 1940s mixing console with vacuum tubes. Each completed song was pressed onto a 12-inch disc, and the vinyl playback was recorded for the final digital master.
Top: Win Butler performing at Lollapalooza in Chicago, 2017. Bottom: William Butler drumming on the concert floor amidst the audience during the Everything Now tour in Mexico City in 2017.
Everything Now tour in Las Vegas, 2017. Top: RĂŠgine Chassagne playing the keytar. Bottom: Richard Reed Parry on guitar. Right: William Butler playing the synth before an illuminated audience.
“We recorded it on tape, we press it to vinyl, and the dig-
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Funeral is an album that not only transformed this once-ramshackle Montréal orchestro-rock collective into instant indie-rock icons, but forever transformed the very concept of indie rock from a fringe movement born of economic circumstance into an aspirational career model. the postcards that ham-radio operators sent one another,
ital is the archive of this physical thing that exists in the
sometimes from halfway around the world, after mak-
world,” Mr. Butler said. “We’re preserving it and using
ing contact. They came from the lifelong collection kept
digital as a mode of distribution, but ultimately there
by the Butlers’ grandfather.
was something real that was made.” The music too overlays old and new. It harks back to styles that shook up the late 1970s and early 1980s—new wave, David Bowie’s avant-glam-rock, synth-pop—but
in featureless, interchangeable suburbs: their family
shapes them with the Arcade Fire’s own sense of struc-
lived near Houston. In “Sprawl II” Ms. Chassagne sings,
ture and timing. Songs rarely end as they began. Cozy
“Living in the sprawl/dead shopping malls rise like moun-
acoustic arrangements take on eerie shadows, snappy
tains beyond mountains/and there’s no end in sight.”
rockers make tricky turns, wistfulness expands to gran-
The songs on the new album neither condemn nor praise
deur. The album doesn’t resolve its own questions; it
the suburbs. They sustain a double vision of past and
expands their mystery.
Arcade Fire
On The Suburbs, Arcade Fire ruminates on memory and modernity, and about childhoods spent, like the Butlers’,
present, childhood reminiscences and grown-up reflections, alienation and longing, thoughts about the “modern kids” who “build it up just to burn it back down.” Bono of U2 said, via e-mail, “As quiet a storm as they would like this album to appear, it still contains all the big themes and ideas that make all around them appear so vapid.” The album ponders change in songs like “We Used to Wait,” about the bygone days of postal correspondence and the anticipation that has disappeared in the age of e-mail and instant gratification. When the band plays 27
the song onstage, the video screen shows QSL cards:
The Modern Age
Arcade Fire
29
Left: William Butler and Regine Chassagne; Right: Win Butler, and frequent tour members Sarah Neufeld and Stuart Bogie (clockwise). All performing on the Everything Now tour in Mexico.
Win Butler performing in Las Vegas on their Everything Now tour in 2017. On the left, he is singing and lying on the ground in the middle of the concert floor, surrounded by audience members.
The Modern Age Arcade Fire 33
The band is simultaneously a throwback to a more heroic age of rock and a glimmer of hope in a digital era that forces musicians to fend for themselves. It prizes the sounds and methods of a disappearing era: hand-played instruments, analog recording, albums made to be heard as a whole.
The Modern Age
Arcade Fire
35
Previous page: promotional photo for Everything Now. Left page: Win Butler and RĂŠgine Chassagne backstage; Audience from Everything Now tour in Chicago.
Arcade Fire
Everything Now tour in Mexico city: the band performs before an illuminated audience; Regine backstage with mariachi performers; frequent tour performer, Sarah Neufeld playing the violin.
The Modern Age
Various photos of the band performing during their tour of The Suburbs in 2010. The band is known to play a whide range of instruments, and constantly switches during sets; Top: William Butler on the drums. Bottom: RĂŠgine Chassagne plays the accordion.
Top: the band plays songs from their album The Suburbs during their Everything Now tour in 2017. Bottom left: RĂŠgine Chassagne playing the hurdy gurdy. Bottom right: Win Butler playing the mandolin.
The Modern Age
Arcade Fire
39
Everything Now tour in Mexico City in 2017; Left: Win Butler performing before an audience. Right: Régine Chassagne singing “Electric Blue.”
Arcade Fire’s 2010 Album, The Suburbs, won a Grammy for Album of The Year in 2011, beating out major competitors Eminem, Lady Antebellum, Lady Gaga, and Katy Perry.
The Modern Age Arcade Fire 41
Arcade Fire is determined to maintain the album as an artistic format, a physical object and an emotional experience. On “The Suburbs,” as on the rest of the band’s albums, the songs cross-reference and comment on one another, gathering depth and resonance as a whole.
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Arcade Fire
43
Members/
Win Butler RĂŠgine Chassagne William Butler Richard Reed Parry Jeremy Gara Tim Kingsbury
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Arcade Fire
45
Arcade Fire
During a time when the world thought Rock n’ Roll was headed towards a fad of the past, the Strokes exploded the music industry, showing everyone that the genre was better than ever and here to stay. From singer Casablancas’ brusque, corrosive drawl, to the perfect weaving of rhythm and lead guitars of Hammond Jr. and Valensi, the band perfectly capture the epic essence of 60’s and 70’s garage rock while adding their own modern spin. The Strokes’ legacy is a combination of revival and innovation that has captivated the world and shaped the future of rock n’ roll.
The Modern Age
The Strokes c. 1998
New York City, NY
Members/Julian Casablancas, Albert Hammond Jr., Nick Valensi, Nikolai Fraiture , Fabrizio Moretti Influences/ The Ramones, The Velvet Underground, Talking Heads, Jane’s Addiction, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, The Doors, Sonic Youth, Guns N’ Roses
When they emerged from the New York scene at the turn of the millennium, the scruffy, hip, Seventies-inflected Strokes seemed to embody the very nature of downtown cool— mixing Lou Reed vocals and as much sweaty, garage-rock mystique as you could pack into three-minute tunes—despite the fact that most of the band had grown up uptown. Thanks to a truckload of positive press and the terrific Modern Age EP, the Strokes were famous before they even put out a full-length album. When they released one, 2001’s Side sound cool again. The son of modeling agent John Casablancas, singer Julian Casablancas attended a
The Strokes
Is This It, the band backed up the buzz with killer hooks, making New York’s Lower East
Swiss boarding school, where he began playing music with another scion of the wellknown, rhythm guitarist Albert Hammond Jr. (whose namesake father had a number of early-Seventies hits such as “It Never Rains in Southern California”). Casablancas had already played in Manhattan, his hometown, with lead guitarist Nick Valensi and drummer Fabrizio Moretti; he’d also been a friend of future bassist Nikolai Fraiture. When Albert Hammond Jr. moved to New York (he’d enrolled at NYU), he hooked up with Casablancas and the three others and started playing bars in the borough’s Lower East Side in 1999. Ryan Gentles, the booker for small New York club the Mercury Lounge, quit his job to become the group’s manager. With a sound that evoked the flat rumble of late-Seventies New York rock but whose chewy tunes were rooted in the new wave candy of the Cars, The Strokes’ appeal was immediate; they became the most popular club band in New York.
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DISCOGRAPHY A summary of the major works recorded by the Strokes from 1998-2018, including EPs and LPs, with exception of deluxe editions or single releases. The band’s discography has recieved many notable accolades, including international awards, and landing several spots on Rolling Stone’s respected celebratory archive lists—including “The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.”
i. Is This It 2001, RCA Records The debut from these modern ragamuffins was a blast of guitar combo racket that made New York’s shadows sound vicious and exciting again. Is This It mixed Velvet Underground grime, the jangle of Seventies punk, and skinny-tie New Wave jangle with Julian Casablancas’ Lower East Side dispatches—sometimes acidic, always full of great melody. Few bands have packaged themselves as brilliantly as the Strokes on their debut. Like John Lennon double-tracking his vocals so he could scream across the gap it created, frontman Julian Casablancas uses distance to communicate passion. His greatest trick is a pleading tear in his voice that lets him slip around the songs, crooning one second, leering the next, then exploding into a throat-shredding shout. His message is relatively simple: I’ll try harder, but don’t bother leaving, I’m walking out the door. Or, as he says in “Take It or Leave It,” “Girls lie too much/Boys are too tough/Enough is enough.” Everywhere on Is This It he is lamenting relationships that go nowhere but won’t go away.
ii. Room on Fire 2003, RCA Records One of the best things about Room on Fire, is that, in most ways that matter, it is exactly like their debut, Is This It. Nick Valensi’s and Albert Hammond Jr.’s dirty-treble guitars cut ‘n’ thrust over the hard-rubber bounce of bassist Nikolai Fraiture and drummer Fabrizio Moretti. Singer-songwriter Julian Casablancas delivers his put-up-or-fuck-off telegrams in a brusque, corrosive drawl. However, the distance and distrust in his songwriting and ashen monotone on Is This It were nothing like this. Casablancas sings the title chorus of “You Talk Way Too Much” with cold, dry calm— the high, mocking whine of the lead-guitar break provides extra cruelty—and wraps up the brittle reggae of “Automatic Stop” with even less gallantry: “I’m not your friend/I never was.” Casablancas sings with heavily distorted irritation in the song “Reptilia”, which remains one of the band’s greatest songs to date. If you want comfort and clarity, you’re definitely in the wrong room. This record was built for thrills and speed.
Notable EPs: The Modern Age EP 2001
Future Present Past 2016
iii. First Impressions of Earth 2006, RCA Records
i. Is This It 2001
beefier, louder sound. Guitarists Valensi and Hammond Jr. get to show off, while drummer Moretti provides the forward momentum that makes the Strokes a killer groove band. They’ve never kicked harder than “Juicebox,” which turns the old “Peter Gunn” riff into a surf-metal snarl, or “Heart in a Cage,” which jumps like Iggy Pop in “The Passenger.” The album’s opening track, “You Only Live Once” has become one of their most iconic and beloved songs of all time. The music on the entire album is full of beard-stroking
ii. Room On Fire 2003
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First Impressions of Earth is different, as the Strokes go for a heavier,
classic-rock flourishes. Casablancas has an uncanny ear for the “did-he-say-that?” moment, when a dumb bar-stool monologue veers into a brilliant little haiku. He achieves that effect with lines like “I love you more than being seventeen.” First Impressions of Earth proves what the Strokes set out to prove: They’re a serious band of dedicated craftsmen, a band that is here to stay.
iii. First Impressions of Earth 2006
iv. Angles 2011, RCA Records Angles is made up of 10 songs built mostly from basic rock-combo parts, charged and scarred with an exacting attention to musically and romantically turbulent detail. This is the Strokes’ first true giant step forward from their debut, Is This It. Angles tightens the striving that was spread thin across First Impressions with proven
iv. Angles 2011
martial jangle: Fraiture and Moretti’s stoic grip on the beat, robotic-Yardbirds crossfires of crispy-fuzz and brittle-treble guitars. “Machu Picchu” is a sly union of cocky menace—a bony city-reggae gait, wet with echo—and the kind of rapid-strum fury that came with the choruses on early Who singles. Casablancas is one of rock’s most interior singers, writing in confrontational dialogue, then cloth. “There’s no one I disapprove of/Or root for more than myself,” he declares in “Life Is Simple in the Moonlight.” That bravado, cut with doubt, sums up his band’s greatness and dilemma. The Strokes invented their own rock, and they also want to be better.
v. Comedown Machine 2013
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singing from behind the guitars, through what sounds like cheese-
v. Comedown Machine 2013, RCA Records Comedown Machine is another step further in exploring new sound. The result is basically a solo trip for singer Casablancas, showing yet again how much he respects Eighties New Wave, and showcasing his falsetto vocal range. This experiment in expanding vocals not only shys away from the grungy rasp-scream Casablancas is typically known for, but is so random—considering he has since gone back to his traditional corrosive drawl with their more recent Future Present Past EP. He begins strong in “Tap Out,” a DeBarge tribute with a cheese-guitar solo straight out of Lionel Richie’s “Running With the Night.” “One Way Trigger” ineptly rips A-ha, and “80’s Comedown Machine” aims for a softer side of Howard Jones. “Welcome to Japan” is merely the most obvious of the many Duran Duran-indebted moments. (Great question, too: “What kind of consensus is: however it compares to the rest of their body of work, in general, it’s still a damn good album.
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asshole drives a Lotus?”). No matter the direction, the general
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Why The Strokes are the Most Important Rock Band of the 21st Century.
T
he Strokes’ debut album, Is This It wasn’t
But as offensive as the hype, the pretty-boy photosets,
just a massive, worldwide commercially
and the privileged backgrounds were to the rock
successful album. It was also a massive,
cognoscenti, the most damning early criticism about
worldwide critically acclaimed album; an
the Strokes was that they looked and sounded shock-
impressive achievement, especially consid-
ingly derivative. From their skinny jeans and vintage
ering the band’s rapid rise to fame from random city
shirts to their punky rhythms and distressed guitar
kids to rock n’ roll icons. Is This It had this huge cultural
tones, everything about the Strokes seemed like it was
impact that made this group of five New Yorkers the
lifted from ’60s and ’70s garage rock. It wasn’t just
voice of a generation. This album was a decade-defin-
that Casablancas’ stuttery vocal drawl sounded like
ing record that set the agenda for how rock sounded
Lou Reed; it was that the entire song “The Modern
and even looked throughout the aughts. More impor-
Age” was a Velvet Underground song—specifically “I’m Waiting for the Man.” The Strokes themselves openly
in the past 10 years.
admitted that their tune “Last Nite” was an outright
Even before the record hit U.S. shelves on Oct. 9, 2001,
even jokingly sang the “American Girl” lyrics to the music
sensible public opinion was already biased against the
of “Last Nite” during some live shows.
heist of TomPetty’s 1977 hit “American Girl.” Casablancas
The Strokes
tantly, Is This It remains the single best album released
Strokes. Lest we should forget, Is This It was the ur-album Of course, these knocks against The Strokes would have
so deafening that the Strokes were famous before they
landed more sharply if the album wasn’t so damn good.
had ever done anything. As soon as the U.K. label Rough
To the surprise of those who had called the band tal-
Trade released a three-song EP of the band’s demos,
entless, posturing pretty boys, Is This It was nothing less
the notoriously excitable music magazine NME threw
than an 11-song fireball that showed the Strokes to be
the Strokes on its cover and anointed them rock n’ roll’s
musicians with a real artistic vision. (And a sense of
newest saviors.
humor: The record’s title is a nice wink at the staggering hype.) As Casablancas then explained it to the Strokes’
Soon, stories began trickling across the Atlantic of crazed
producer Gordon Raphael, “We want to sound like a
fans paying exorbitant sums to get into London gigs.
band from the past that took a time trip into the future
And even worse was what music fans saw on that NME
to make their record.”
cover: five preposterously good-looking young men who had met at (gasp!) elite private schools. Drummer
Beneath the shaggy haircuts and puppy-dog eyes there
Fabrizio Moretti and guitarist Nick Valensi appeared to
lurked an idea for a crisper, more melodic rock album
have been stolen from a Calvin Klein shoot, and lead
that would radically update the sound of its forebears—
man Julian Casablancas was actually the son of a mod-
one that, crucially, went against the overproduced
eling mogul.
schlock then infesting the charts. “Everyone was using
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This article was originally written for the publication Racecar Spacecar, with excertps of the article “The Strokes’ Is This It” by Taylor Clark, originally published in The Slate. The NME Magazine cover reffered to in the article is pictured left.
of the Internet hype era; the buzz around the band was
RCA Records press photoshoot of the Strokes for the Room on Fire tour in 2003, at Bowlmor Lanes, NYC; Shot by Colin Lane.
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Pro Tools and digital technology, tripling the snare drum and adding samples to make everything 25 stories tall,” Raphael told Pitchfork. “So I thought, ‘What could be the opposite of that?’ ” The opposite of that, it turned out, was to capture a tightly knit musical unit playing live, all in one room, committing it to tape with a fuzzy and nostalgic analog warmth. The Strokes did take after take of each song until they got one in which they all played extraordinarily; they toyed with microphone placements to give the drums the right distorted, almost machinelike feel; was just right. And to the band’s eternal credit, they fought hard to preserve this neo-vintage sound—very much against the wishes of their new bosses at RCA, who thought they were committing career suicide by
The Strokes
they twisted knobs on their guitar amps until each tone
over-muddling the mix. Once Is This It finally landed in America (its release here had to be delayed so the band could replace the blistering—and not exactly flattering—“New York City Cops” after 9/11), the response was immediate and seismic. There were plenty of rave reviews, naturally, as critics marveled at the young band’s astonishing confidence and the record’s clockwork efficiency. But more amazing by far was the great rumbling tremor that Is This It sent through the music industry itself, a change so desperately needed that The Strokes should be considered humanitarians. At the time, remember, bands such as (brace yourself) Limp Bizkit, Staind, Slipknot, and Linkin Park—along with a heavy dose of Creed—absolutely dominated the 57
rock charts. With one sweep of their Chuck Taylors, the
Strokes kicked the nu-metal blight to the curb, clearing the way for other garage-influenced bands like the White Stripes and Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and spawning many imitators, among them bands like Kings of Leon, Franz Ferdinand, and the Killers. And just as these groups continue to try to sound like The Strokes, they’re still trying to look like them as well. Whatever you thought of the band’s sound, there was no questioning their effortless cool, and it wasn’t long before admiring designers like Hedi Slimane caught on and began peddling skinny jeans first to rockers and fashionistas, and then to the rest of us. Take a look at the 2001 video for the Strokes tune “Someday”—in which the boys pal around a dive bar in their tight jeans, vintage shirts, and denim jackets—and just try to tell me that it couldn’t double as a documentary about hipsters in 2011. Yet even if Is This It hadn’t influenced the last decade’s look and sound so profoundly, it would remain that rarest of musical artifacts: a truly great album. Early profiles of The Strokes often noted that the band, in the words of Rolling Stone’s Jenny Eliscu, “display[ed] a loyalty fiercer than that of most lovers,” and this cohesion shines through in every note of Is This It; the album captures the sound of five guys playing as one. For all the griping about The Strokes’ lack of innovation, their emotional commitment was never a question. You can hear it in the mournful urgency of “Trying Your Luck,” the good-time vibes of “Someday,” the heartsick vocal shredding of “Take It or Leave It.” Listening to Is This It feels, to this very day, like sharing a moment of lightning-in-a-bottle brilliance in some dark basement studio with five friends. Well, five extraordinarily good-looking friends who would emasculate you with their galling, starlet-attracting cool—but, still, friends. The Strokes’ debut album alone probably qualifies them for the accolade of most influential rock band of the past fifteen years, but four great albums later, they’re still going strong. What came after the release of their debut album, you ask? Their follow-up album, Room On Fire came out in 2003 and it was another critical and
Left: backstage performance shots of the band at the Los Angeles Greek Theater in 2002 for their Is This It tour. Right: Nikolai Fraiture practicing backstage at Radio City Music Hall in NYC 2002.
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“First Impressions of Earth” proves what the Strokes set out to prove: They’re a serious band of dedicated craftsmen, a band that is here to stay. It also proves they could steal your girlfriend without even trying—but you already knew that.
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Left: original photoshoot for NME feature in 2001, NYC. Right: RCA Records press photoshoot for the Strokes’ Is This It tour in 2001.Following page: the band outside CBGB’s before their performance in 2001.
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Then again, no one else has made anything as good as
“Reptilia” and “12:51.” However, although most critics
Is This It in the last 10 years either. The Strokes’ pre-
praised the album by giving scores like 4.5 out of 5
decessors, Nirvana, is one of those bands that will be
stars, etcetera, many said that it was too similar to
remembered for years to come, and are even inducted
its predecessor and also less effective.
into the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame, despite only record-
Their next album, First Impressions of Earth, came out
career. The Strokes have made many more, but could
three years later and had similar reviews than the previ-
still be viewed the same way— their influence and
The Strokes
commercial success, which brought iconic songs like
ing three studio albums over the course of their short
ous album, but it brought one of The Strokes’ best songs
longevity alone could stem from their debut album, Is
of their career, “You Only Live Once,” which had an
This It. And while a God who loves his creation will surely
accompanying music video that was almost as famous
see to it that young men won’t be wearing skinny jeans
as “Last Nite.” The video for the song shows the band
and attending The Killers concerts another decade
dressed in all white performing in an enclosed room,
from now, they’ll still be listening to—and loving—Is This
while liquid tobacco tar gradually fills up the room until
It. They might mistake the Strokes for a band from the
they are completely underneath the surface by the end.
mid-’70s, but they’ll be listening.
With these albums, as well as 2011’s Angles and 2013’s Comedown Machine, their initial impact was fairly well received, but it is their longevity and influence over time that is monumental. New listeners continue to discover and cherish the work from all three albums for its 70’s grunge attitude, inventive lyrics, and Casablancas’ edgy, 61
raspy serenade.
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Gritty, exhilarating, and sexy, the Strokes’ brand of retro rock ‘n’ roll recalled the DIY fervor and excitement of ‘70s punk rock. The Strokes’ popularity opened the floodgates for a new crop of New York City-based bands that restored one faith’s in rock ‘n’ roll again.
Rehearsing for the Strokes/ White Stripes concert at Radio City Music Hall in NYC, 2002. Originally shot for Rolling Stone.Top left: band rehearsing; bottom left: Hammond Jr. Right: lead singer, Julian Casablancas.
Performance at the Viper Room in Los Angeles, 2003, Room on Fire tour. Left: Julian Casablancas singing, Albert Hammond Jr. on rythm guitar. Top right: Nick Valensi on lead guitar with Nikolai Fraiture on Bass; Bottom: Casablancas and Hammond Jr. before a crowd.
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Previous page: Press shoot for Is This It. Current: The Strokes backstage rehearsals in The Music Building in NYC 2002 for NME.
The Strokes performing at the Los Angeles Greek Theater in 2002 for their Is This It tour. Left: Julian Casablancas; Top right: Nick Valensi; bottom: Casablancas and Hammond Jr.
The Strokes’ debut album had a huge cultural impact that made this group of five New Yorkers the voice of a generation. The album was a decade-defining record that set the agenda for how rock sounded and even looked throughout the aughts.
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Members/
Julian Casablancas Albert Hammond Jr. Nikolai Fraiture Nick Valensi Fabrizio Moretti
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If there’s one thing that the music industry can agree on, it’s the lasting legacy that Radiohead has cultivated in such a short matter of time—this band is truly one of the most groundbreaking groups of the 21st century. Winner of multiple Grammys, this band has redefined rock music over and over again with every album they release. Captivating lyrics, meticulously constructed electronic textures, and radical promotional tactics are some of the many elements that has shaken the music industry’s very infrastructure. Listening to a Radiohead song is more than just an activity—it’s a euphoric experience.
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Radiohead c. 1989——Oxford, England
Members/ Thom Yorke, Ed O’Brien, Jonny Greenwood, Philip Selway, Colin Greenwood Influences/ The Smiths, The Beatles, The Talking Heads, Happy Mondays, Pixies, Throwing Muses, Fleetwood Mac, Elvis Costello, Tom Waits
Radiohead are one of the most innovative and provocative bands of the 1990s and 2000s, The band, who’s the biggest art-rock act since Pink Floyd, began as purveyors of a swooning, from-the-gut sound that Alicia Silverstone aptly labeled as “complaint rock” in the film Clueless. But albums like 1997’s space-rock opera OK Computer and 2000’s slippery, is-this-even-rock? Kid A (which was Rolling Stone’s album of the decade for the 2000s) were game-changers—future-shock opuses that showed off shadowy, meticulously constructed electronic textures and inspired thousands of imitators,
Born in 1968, singer Thom Yorke formed his first band at 10 years old despite admittedly having few friends. An abnormality in his left eye made Yorke the victim of teasing
Radiohead
none of whom had Radiohead’s talents.
in his childhood, with Yorke telling Rolling Stone in 1995 that he often got into fights with his peers. These youthful experiences no doubt contributed to Yorke’s antisocial and confrontational lyrics. In 1985, Yorke met two of his future bandmates at the boys-only Abingdon School and the seeds of Radiohead were planted: Guitarist Ed O’ Brien (recruited because Yorke thought he looked like Morrissey) and bassist Colin Greenwood (recruited because he dressed weird and went to lots of parties, Yorke told Rolling Stone.) Drummer Phil Selway joined soon after, and Greenwood’s younger brother Jonny rounded out the lineup, first as harmonica player, then as keyboardist and finally, as guitarist. After parting ways to attend university, the group, then named On a Friday, reconvened to record a series of demo tapes including one called Manic Hedgehog, which caught the ear of EMI in 1991 during the wave of grunge fever. The label promptly signed the group to a six-album deal but requested they changed their moniker. Thus, in 1992, On a Friday became Radiohead, named after a Talking Heads song that appeared on that band’s True Stories.
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DISCOGRAPHY A summary of the major works recorded by Radiohead from 1993-2018, including EPs and LPs, with exception of deluxe editions or single releases. The band’s discography has recieved many significant accolades, including three Grammy Awards for Best Alternative Album, and landing several spots on Rolling Stone’s respected celebratory archive lists—including “The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.”
i. Pablo Honey 1993, Capitol Records On their debut, Pablo Honey, the swagger affected by every archAnglo since the Kinks is already in full effect. Three guitars (and bass) and a singer whose narcissistic angst rivals Morrissey’s (“I will not control myself!” Thom Yorke screams on “Vegetable,” and on “Prove Yourself” he mourns, “I’m better off dead”), these five Oxford lads come on extreme. What elevates them to fab charm is not only the feedback and strumming fury of their guitarwork— and the dynamism of their whisper-to-a-scream song strutures— which recall the Who by way of the early Jam, but the way their solid melodies and sing-along choruses resonate pop appeal. Pablo Honey also featured the smash hit “Creep,” a song that remains Radiohead’s most lasting, successful single to date.
ii. The Bends 1995, Capitol Records Radiohead’s second album married a majestic and somber guitar sound to Thom Yorke’s anguished-choirboy vocals, drawing on the epic grandeur of U2 and the melancholy of the Smiths. The Bends shocked everyone with its widescreen psychedelic glory, raising Radiohead to a very Seventies kind of U.K. art-rock godhead. The depressive ballad “Fake Plastic Trees” turned up in Clueless, in which Alicia Silverstone memorably tags the band as “complaint rock”; in big-bang dystopian epics like “High and Dry,” Yorke’s choirboy whimper runs laps around Jonny Greenwood’s machinehead guitar heroics.
iii. OK Computer 1997, Capitol Records OK Computer is where Radiohead began pulling at their sound like taffy, not worrying if it was still “rock.” Progress is a bitch, but don’t let the machines, or their masters, grind you down: That is the simple message encoded in the art-rock razzle-dazzle of OK Computer. Hailed as The Dark Side of the Moon for the Information Age, OK Computer is too brittle in its time-signature twists and hairpin guitar turns, too claustrophobic in mood, to qualify as space rock. Instead, Radiohead shatter the soul-sucking echo of isolation and enforced routine with the violent mood swings of “Paranoid Android” and Thom Yorke’s arcing vocal anguish in the gaunt, yearning ballads “Let Down” and “Lucky.” The result is a slow, haunting album with unforgettable tracks such as “Karma Police” and “Paranoid Android.” Guitarist Jonny Greenwood arranged white-noise strings, and Thom Yorke made alienation feel alluring.OK Computer went platinum a year after its release—a welcome testament that smart still sells.
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iv. Kid A 2000, Capitol Records
i. Pablo Honey 1993
Kid A remains the most groundbreaking rock album of the 2000s— only ten months into the century. Radiohead rebuilt, with a new set of basics and a bleak but potent humanity. Just when the Nineties alt-rock heroes seemed destined to become the next U2, they made a fractured, twitchy anti-opus. Despite esoteric nods to electronica in “Idioteque” and free jazz of “The National Anthem”, they morphed alien sounds into a surprisingly accessible elegy to tenderness—and had a hit anyway. In texture and structure, Kid A, Radiohead’s fourth album, renounced everything in rock that, to
ii. The Bends 1995
Yorke in particular, reeked of the tired and overfamiliar: clanging arena-force guitars, verse-chorus-bridge song tricks. Instead, they created an enigma of slippery electronics and elliptical angst, sung by Yorke in an often indecipherable croon.
v. Amnesiac 2001, Capitol Records
iii. OK Computer 1997
The greatest sequel since The Godfather: Part II. Amnesiac was the second half of the one-two punch Radiohead began with 2000’s Kid A.It was smoother on the surface yet just as disorienting underneath, delivering the rock guitars that its predecessor held back, but in all kinds of warped and mutated forms: “Knives an Allman Brothers riff into the trip-hop hinterlands. The piano nightmare “Pyramid Song” remains terrifying, even if nobody has ever figured out what the hell Thom Yorke is saying—probably not
iv. Kid A 2000
Radiohead
Out” soared like vintage Smiths, and “I Might Be Wrong” rode
even Thom Yorke.
Notable EPs: Drill EP 1992
v. Amnesiac 2001
Itch EP 1994
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vi. Hail to the Thief 2003, Capitol Records Hail to the Thief, like everything else the band has done, perplexed fans at first, bristling with punk anger and art-rock ambition. But anyone can hear the raw emotion, especially in the way Yorke combines his fiercest political rage with fatherly devotion in eerie ballads like “A Wolf at the Door” and “I Will.” The guys later claimed they should have trimmed some of the extra tracks, but what fun would that be? The dazzling overabundance of ideas makes Hail to the Thief a triumph, from the guitar monster “2 + 2 = 5” to the slow-burning live staple “There There.”
vii. In Rainbows 2007, Self Release/ TBD Records After a brief hiatus, Radiohead returned with In Rainbows, which shook the music industry’s very infrastructure complete with a surprise release. After the pay-what-you-like release hoopla died down, what were Radiohead fans left with? One of the band’s best albums: expansive and seductive, full of songs they had been fleshing out live for a couple of years. You can hear the musicians’ exhilaration all over the tracks, from the shivery tambourine buzz of “Reckoner” to the jagged guitar waves of “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi.” These are the most intense love songs Thom Yorke has ever sung, especially “All I Need,” and the warm live-percussion feel gives the whole album the vibe of a hippie jam session. One that’s taking place at the end of the world, of course.
viii. The King of Limbs 2011, TBD Records Radioheads’ the eighth studio album, The King of Limbs, has a misleading restraint: lush electronics, thickets of digitally tweaked percussion and cryptic lyrics, sung in a prayerlike daze. At 38 minutes, the LP sounds unfinished and quietly perverse, even more anti-rock than Kid A—at first. Repeated immersion, though, reveals a seductive concision and insistent undertow—the space-alienBeach Boys effect of “Bloom,” the dark, muted-treble blues of the guitars in “Little by Little,” the nimble charge of “Separator.” King of Limbs is a record that grew all year—in your room, and onstage.
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ix. A Moon Shaped Pool 2016, XL Recordings
vi. Hail to the Thief 2003
A Moon Shaped Pool was Radiohead’s gorgeously orchestrated return from five years of limbo. “This is a low-flying panic attack,” Yorke announces on the opening track, “Burn the Witch.” Just in time, guys. In ballads like “Decks Dark,” he sounds overwhelmed by the alien strings and dub bass, as if he awoke from the troubled dreams of Kid A or Amnesiac to find real life was no longer recognizable. This might be Radiohead’s most ravishingly beautiful album, awash in piano and violin and acoustic guitar frills straight out of Led Zeppelin III, finally giving the full studio treatment to longtime
vii. In Rainbows 2007
live favorite “True Love Waits.” Yet somehow it’s never soothing— as Thom Yorke warns here, the truth will mess you up.
Notable EPs: My Iron Lung EP 1994
ix. A Moon Shaped Pool 2016
Radiohead
Airbag/ How Am I Driving? 1998
viii. The King of Limbs 2011
Come Lag EP 2004
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How Radiohead Became the Beatles of the 21st Century
I
n 1996, while most major British bands were
isn’t a switch you press. No-one steps into the Innovator
blowing their royalties on cocaine, light aircraft,
3000 and sets the dial for ‘2017’. It is an endless onward
Patsy Kensit and Hampstead piles, Radiohead
trudge into the unknown that involves a hundred blind
did something quite different. They spent a big
alleys and tedious cul-de-sacs. It has taken a man as
chunk of what they had earned on building an
entirely new studio and filled it with a variety of exotic
self-lacerating and neurotic as Thom Yorke, and a guy as rigidly disciplined as Jonny Greenwood, to make the
types of pricey, abstract and futuristic noise-making
Pablo Honey hit-makers into a group who have shaped
devices. At a time when their contemporaries were just
and reshaped the history of rock on at least three sepa-
whacking the Boss Super Overdrive through the Rat
rate occasions.
pedal and getting on with it, they were obsessed with Considering the way that they have pushed music for-
before. It drove them to the edge of madness, and built
ward, you could build a case for them as The Beatles of
OK Computer.
the 21st century. After all, more than anyone still cutting it, they’ve challenged precisely what it is to sound
Ten years later, making In Rainbows, they were again
like a huge mainstream act. Just look at King Of Limbs:
pushing their talents to the limit in pursuit of innova-
probably the most eagerly anticipated record in history
tion. In this case, that meant Jonny Greenwood at one
and one that consisted mainly of wispy, fractal rhythm
point going away to write an entire piece of software
patterns and diaphanous swirls of electric noise.
Radiohead
chasing a rainbow of sounds no-one had ever heard
While the surface world of rock’n’roll was swept along on
programmer’s hat on, working on it. It was a level of
The Strokes for a decade, the disciples of OK Computer
obsessiveness that led Thom Yorke to claim that he
and Kid A were quietly laying a new foundation for
wasn’t entirely sure the group could make it through
21st-century music; one that cared not for reductive
another album cycle unless they changed their MO.
genre boxes but expected boundary-leaping experimentation from artists as standard.
So they did. King Of Limbs was built specifically to find a unique third way between being an electronic act
As if it wasn’t enough that their first rock-heavy incar-
(programming sequencers) and being a rock band
nation had inspired Muse, Coldplay and Elbow and their
(chopping out chord progressions)—one that ultimately
later minimalist electronic dabblings had fathered a
involved them sampling their own playing, then mixing
whole host of followers such as Foals, Alt-J and Django
it into new compositions. Radiohead have spent a good
Django, Radiohead’s exploratory modernist mental-
deal of their lives banging their heads against a series of
ity is now the norm, from Future Islands to The xx to
sonic brick walls in search of something better. They’re
Metronomy to James Blake and way, way beyond. But
a reminder that innovation often isn’t glamorous. It
they’ve also been our generation’s Beatles in the way
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This article was originally written by Gavin Haynes for NME published in October 2014. Radiohead has since come out with a new LP as well as deluxe releases of past LPs.
that would allow them to control various sound modules they wanted to use. Jonny spent weeks with his
Previous page: press photo for Radiohead’s tour of The Bends. Current page: Press photo for Radiohead’s OK Computer tour in 1997.
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they’ve caused all the clichés of the biz and stardom to warp and fold beneath their massive cultural gravity. The Beatles had Apple Corp, psychedelic feature films, writing all your own songs, the pop concept album, and cross-Wcultural pollination. Radiohead have given us one of the first recorded instances of streaming (via iBlip as far back as 2000’s Kid A); the Scotch Mist webcasts; apps like 2013’s PolyFauna, designed to explore the interzones between art, tech and music; and the ‘newspaper album’ on King Of Limbs—not to mention rewiring the music industry with the pay-what-you-want scheme for In Rainbows, their own social network, and any numCards’, in which “64 lasers rotating and shooting in a 360-degree radius 900-times per-minute produced all the exterior scenes”.
Radiohead
ber of genre-inverting videos from ‘Just’ to ‘House Of
Nowadays, everyone from Beyoncé to Bowie has dropped secret albums that they’ve been working on under a thicket of non-disclosure agreements. Artists have been bitching about their record labels since Thomas Edison first put a stylus on a wax cylinder. But Radiohead have been much better than most at finding interesting ways to cut through all the crap. If Cobain was a teenage whine against corporate rock whores, they are a more mature, wily response; flagbearers for an independence that isn’t just about the refusenik ideals of keeping it real in the back of a van with Henry Rollins. One that’s more about feeling free to use the full weight of the system to make it do what you want, and which involves making a wraparound concept of art-plus-music-plus-life that doesn’t feel 91
aggressively artsy, like it might with a Byrne or an Eno.
The natural tension between the scale of their popularity and the modest limits of their lust for glory has always made them a subversive proposition. In 2000, they stood at the peak of their commercial potential. How did they capitalise on it? They refused to release any singles from Kid A, an album of soupy electronica. Then they toured the country in a white, sponsorshipfree marquee because Thom had read Naomi Klein’s anti-marketing classic No Logo. Thom has pushed the-personal-as-the-political into more interesting and satisfying spaces. He has become a standard-bearer for a generation suspicious of big, flag-waving sentiment. It’s a very 21st-century kind of politicking—somewhere between Russell Brand’s ‘don’t vote’ nihilism and the kind of DIY community ethic you might spot on Portlandia. They are a reflection of how, unlike our parents’ generation, who waved the flag and bashed the barricades, getting the Powers That Be to change the world is often not as helpful or fulfilling as making your own small-scale change where you can. Just as The Beatles came to embody the ’60s, Thom Yorke is the rock star who most clearly reflects our times. Two decades ago, he looked into the future and it weirded him out. What he saw crushed him under the weight of its haste, its twisted crony-capitalist logic, its avalanche of prescription meds, its technological shrinking of life and society until you’re never alone but always alone. He articulated something that spoke to the way we live now, demonstrated an uncomfortable angst that connects Muse (at first widely dismissed as ‘Radiohead copyists’) with Bloc Party, Everything Everything with Burial. They even cut old-school duston-the-tapeheads tracks with no less a Luddite than Jack White. It’s just one more wrong-footing from a band who only seem to find their balance when they’re throwing everyone else off theirs.
Radiohead on their Dead Air Space tour live in Madison Square Garden, NYC 2016. Top Left: guitarist Ed O’Brien; Bottom: Jonny Greenwood on keys; Right: lead singer, Thom Yorke on keys. At the show, the band played their hit “Let Down” for the first time in 10 years.
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It has taken a man as self-lacerating and neurotic as Thom Yorke, and a guy as rigidly disciplined as Jonny Greenwood, to make the “Pablo Honey” hit-makers into a group who have shaped and reshaped the history of rock on at least three separate occasions.
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Radiohead on their Against Demons Tour in 1998 at the Montréal Bell Center in Québec, Canada. Left: Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood. Right: Thom Yorke, Ed O’Brien, and Colin Greenwood.
Radiohead behind the scenes during their recording of their LP A Moon Shaped Pool. Top Left: a full orchestra ready for recording. Bottom right: Thom Yorke mixing in studio. Top Right: Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood recording. Bottom left: The band in the studio.
Radiohead has spent a good deal of their lives banging their heads against a series of sonic brick walls in search of something better. They’re a reminder that innovation often isn’t glamorous.
Radiohead on tour for their Dead Air Space tour in 2016— promotional and live. Top left: drummer Philip Selway performing in Miami. Top right: Thom Yorke on keys in Miami. Bottom right: Jonny Greenwood on synth.
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Previous page: Thom Yorke takes a bow for a full crowd at the end of a show at the Greek Theater in Berkley, CA, in 2017 for their Dead Air Space tour. Current page: press photos for Radiohead’s Pablo Honey, in 1992.
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Radiohead has challenged precisely what it is to sound like a huge mainstream act. Just look at “King Of Limbs”—probably the most eagerly anticipated record in history and one that consisted mainly of wispy, fractal rhythm patterns and diaphanous swirls of electric noise.
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Members/
Thom Yorke Jonny Greenwood Ed O’Brien Colin Greenwood Philip Selway
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This book was designed, curated, and written by Olivia Alchek for the Senior Capstone seminar project in 2018 at Washington University in St. Louis. Typfaces used: Brown Std, Prestige Elite Std, Harbour, and Nora Display.