2003: Room on Fire - The Strokes
Looking back at 30 years of music | The Strokes, The White Stripes, Beyonce, Kings of Leon, Warren Zevon
How do you follow up your critically acclaimed, much loved and all conquering first album without disappointing or alienating your growing audience?
Just make your first album all over again!
I recently wrote of The Strokes’ debut that “every track on the album is an anthem, a revitalising shock of life and energy. It’s a perfect whirlwind of unshackled, unbridled youth and freedom. It is a perfect guitar album” but could easily have written the exact same paragraph about it’s follow up, Room on Fire.
It’s a testament to the quality of these two albums that over 20 years after they were both released, I still can’t decide which one I like more; which one has better songs and performances, which one is the better album.
But most of the time, I think it’s actually Room on Fire. The band feel a little more mature here, more sure of themselves and confident in what they’re doing whilst still keeping their vitality and energy. The music has not changed too much, but there is slightly more variety in their arrangements and tempos, more light and shade in the songs than on the pedal-to-the-metal predecessor.
The album is still bursting at the seams with joyous, anthemic choruses and rock and roll riffs but overall it feels like there’s a bit more depth and a lot more variety in the music. There is more push and pull, more stopping and going and rising and falling here than on the breathless and straight ahead, play-til-we-drop Is This It.
Julian gets more space to stretch out with his vocals. The rhythm section of Nikolai Fraiture and Fabrizio Moretti are playing pretty much the same as they did on the last album but the guitars from Albert Hammond Jr. and Nick Valensi are a little more intricate and inventive, and much warmer in tone.
In fact, the whole feel of the album is warmer than the first record. The music has remained largely the same, but the production has improved massively between 2001 and 2003. Is This It is like listening to lightning striking, a red hot band finding themselves in the studio and capturing the pure electricity of their youth and energy. By the time they had to write and record the songs for this second album, it felt like they had learned how to conjure and control that lightning, and to wield it at will.
None of the songs here are quite hot enough to make it feel like the room really is on fire, but you do get the sense that the guitars could cause a spark and ignite at any moment.
Elsewhere in 2003…
It’s hard to really remember a time when The White Stripes’ Seven Nation Army didn’t exist. It’s one of those unavoidable songs that is so deeply ingrained in your brain that it feels like it’s always been there. It is one of our modern Standards.
You hear this song playing on the speakers in shops and in bars; you hear it on TV (Love Island, The Vampire Diaries, The Masked Singer) and in films (Suicide Squad). You hear it in sports stadiums - it’s been played after so many goals at this year’s Euros and so many football fan-bases have their own chants to the tune - and you hear it from buskers on the high-street, or at every open mic night. You also hear it in your head, on eternal loop, for the rest of the day any time it plays within earshot.
Another song that it’s hard to believe hasn’t always just existed which came out in 2003 is Beyonce’s Crazy in Love. Perhaps the enormous sampled Chi-Lites brass riff that announces the start of the song and runs throughout helps give it a timeless feel, and joining a long list of songs about being crazy in love (Crazy He Calls Me - Billie Holliday, Crazy - Patsy Cline, Crazy for You - Madonna) gives it a familiar thematic feel, but this song was always destined to be a hit. Just listen to it. It’s hugely powerful, hugely exciting and an incredible way to kick off your solo career.
Also making their debut in 2003 with an undeniable lead single were Kings of Leon and Red Morning Light. It’s pure energy and adrenaline, taps into the thrill and feel of what The Strokes were doing at the time via the deep South. This song races along at over a hundred miles an hour. It’s a visceral blitz - Caleb Followill sounds like a wildcat at times here when he screams and yelps - through the history of Southern Rock and brings us into the red morning light of the future.
In a year of great debuts, Warren Zevon made his twelfth album and final farewell. Zevon began work on The Wind as soon as he was diagnosed with pleural mesothelioma in 2002, and died two weeks after it’s release on September 7, 2003.
The first line on the album, “some days I feel like my shadow’s casting me, some days the sun don’t shine” tells us right off the bat how Zevon was feeling in the face of his cancer diagnosis, but true to form he has a sense of humour and a rebel spirit all across the record.
Zevon had a lot of big fans in the entertainment industry. After hearing the news of his ill-health, David Letterman dedicated an entire show to him (on which Zevon uttered his immortal “enjoy every sandwich” line) and Bob Dylan began incorporating Warren Zevon covers into his live show (Accidentally Like a Martyr, Boom Boom Mancini, Lawyers Guns and Money and Mutineer).
“Nothing tells a man he’s about to die like when Bob Dylan starts doing your music”, Zevon joked after finding out about the tributes, but he was moved to return the favour and include a Dylan cover on his final album, the fitting Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.
Warren Zevon left us with a complicated legacy, but a brilliant chronicle of his dirty life and times with which to keep him in our hearts.
I was listening to Warren Zevon singing about sitting in the Hollywood Hawaiian Hotel. He was listening to the air conditioner hum. It went hmm.
Notable album releases:
50 Cent - Get Rich or Die Tryin’
Al Green - I Can’t Stop
Amy Winehouse - Frank
David Bowie - Reality
Emmylou Harris - Stumble Into Grace
Jay-Z - The Black Album
Joan Baez - Dark Chords on a Big Guitar
Kelis - Tasty
Kylie Minogue - Body Language
OutKast - Speakerboxxx/The Love Below
Coming up in 2004: So. Many. Guitar. Groups.
Great stuff - totally agree on The Strokes and love WZ!