Totally. Their last record has not aged especially well with me over time, coupled with my extreme annoyance with bands who take a half decade off.

Its funny, I played the last album in anticipation of this one, and I thin its fucking awesome. The only song I don't really like is the single.

Yeah, I like the last one, too. "Heart In A Cage" is one of my fav Strokes songs. ("Under Cover of Darkness" is heading that way--I know it's sort of redundant as a Strokes song, but something about it really appeals to me.)

I'll concede there's 2-3 songs on this album I could do without. Maybe they should have made a 26 minute album.

Once I got over the initial shock of them opening the album with a Vampire Weekend riff, and the whole spaced out 80s vibe, I really like this. I sent the link to some folks and described it as a male-fronted Yeah Yeah Yeahs attempt to re-score the Breakfast Club. (I kniw I used that earlier, but there's a song that really kind of reminds me of Dont you forget about me)

I don't openly hate it, but c'mon at nearly 53 min it's pushing the envelope of this listener. 'You Only Live Once' is up there with my favourite Strokes songs and a few others still sound great to me (including 'Ask Me Anything'), but as a gestalt it's gotten hard for me to sit through it start to finish.

And I don't want to ever hear 'Juicebox' again.

good lord

edit: this is just in response to that description. haven't listened to the album yet.

Liking this album is similar to not liking pizza or the Beatles. Having this opinion doesn't make you interesting, you're just lying.

Halfway through so far, nothing amazing standing out. It's not a train wreck, ... I'm not sure exactly what it is. Some of thus borders on the Fey. And damn, Games sounds so incredibly 80's.

Did Jerkass write this for you? Because I always thought you were better than this, cats.

It does sound like something Jerkass would say. But he would have said it about the first Strokes album.

I was more or less just saying. I don't really care if ya'll like it. I wish I did.

Two Kinds of Happiness is a Replacements outtake.

Listened to it almost 2 times today. There's a few good songs (Under Cover Of Darkness, Taken For A Fool), a lot of mediocre ones and some truly shitty ones (Machu Picchu, Call Me Back). I think Julian is trying to sound like Bono on Two Kinds Of Happiness *yuck*. The only constant good thing throughout the album is Albert's guitar playing but that's not enough.

This is where I'm at after 1x through.

I've also really started to hate Julian's mumbling.

Machu Picchu makes me want to go to a clothing store to eat their chips and salsa.

I wonder which Stroke wrote Taken For A Fool? Easily one of the best songs they've ever written.

just make sure not to accidentally drop any dessicants into the salsa

The Arcade Fire got away with rehashing boring 20 year old shit.
Now we have a 15 year old band that sounds like their dad is playing the keys.

This is not a professional record.
It's thoughtless horseshit.

They don't give a fuck.
And a lot of retards are gonna buy it.

My expectations for this were pretty slim, but I held out some hope that the band would bring in the influence of their outside projects to create an arguably great/awful mess of an album, but there's no argument here. It's the Strokes imitating the Strokes while not even liking the Strokes. It's not completely horrible, but it's sad and depressing and lifeless and rote. It sounds like a case study in the debilitating effects of fame and affluence on TEH RAWK. These lazy, ungrateful swine just went from England's Newest Hitmakers to Dirty Work in the space of 4 albums.

I don't necessarily disagree with this assessment despite finding most of the album enjoyable.

That's because we actually like Dirty Work.

haha. I am with you here, Bloor. Definitely agree with what Rads is saying but I enjoy it in spite of that. I loved their first album and didn't really get into their others, so this is a nice break from the listenable but forgetful Explosions in the Sky album. Plus, I could listen to Under cover of Darkness over and over. I love it. It's fun. That's it.

Thats kind of what i thought. Which means they could "rebound" with their own Steel Wheels or Bridges.

Fuck me. When I first heard "Machu Picchu", I openly gagged, and seeing them at the SXSW show (riot!) wasn't anything special, but I keep coming back to this and liking it more each time. Stranger still, I hear The Cars and Queen and Thin Lizzy and bits of things I typically don't like on their own, but when balled together and mumbled back out, it seems to work. I pretty much hate 80s music, and this keeps reminding me of the 80s, but I can't turn it off.