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Monday, October 27, 2003
Well, it's sort of a retraction.

Okay, can someone please remind me why The Strokes were such a polarizing force about two years ago? Listening to Is This It? last week had me scratching my head over how it managed to become the Roe vs. Wade of the rock crit world in 2001, with everyone forced to choose sides: "saviors of rock!" or "everything that's wrong with music today!" At the time, I found myself in the latter category, ironically earning myself a spot on this very staff with a lengthy diatribe against the band's hype machine, socioeconomic background, and rampant influence-pilfering. You know, basically everything but the music.

I feel pretty silly about such grandstanding nowadays, having finally listened to, and embraced, at least the show-stopping middle third of The Strokes' debut.


"Having finally listened to"? You can't mean that, right Rob? To be fair, I've never had much of a problem with Mr. Mitchum, and his ouevre is reasonably impressive (rescued PF from their SY-hate with the Murray Street review, and good looks at the All Girl Summer Fun Band and Junior Senior). And yeah, it's rare to see a critic do this, although they should do it more often. But let's just hope PF learns some lessons from this. We'll see, I guess.