no. 5 - Is This It? by The Strokes

                Is it predetermined for every alt/indie kid to love this album? Because it feels like it is. These songs have been stuck in my head all day just thinking about writing this post.

                The Strokes were my foray into alternative music. Granted, this is like the most baby step you can take, but until getting into them, I mostly only listened to what my parents liked plus a smattering of pop music. My friend Ella was the reason I started listening. I remember her bat mitzvah, she had the best soundtrack playing the whole day. From Cake to Ingrid Michaelson, I remember being deeply impressed (as if I had any basis being impressed) and wanted to write down every single artist I heard. We had health class together that year, and in between her doodling beautiful art on our coursework and giggling at body parts, she would show me music.

                This is also the year I started going on tumblr, which definitely helped my alt music education. But mainly I attribute my love for this album to Ella and her bat mitzvah. I know she also showed me the song What Ever Happened from another one of their albums, and I was amazed to know they even had another album. I was in the habit of listening to the same things over and over again and never looking to see if the artists I loved had more things than the one album I knew of. I liked to repeat the classics. I listened until I had the lyrics memorized. Whenever I heard a new song, I listened until I knew the lyrics. Or I’d read the lyric book while I listened. I’m still the same way- I tend to approach songs like poems. I want to dissect them until I know the meaning behind all of it. I look into the artist’s life to see what the words could allude to aside from the obvious. It’s a creepy kind of devotion, one that has definitely landed me in some weird examples of being a super fan. But that’s why I was an English major, right? Love those deep dives into the hidden symbolism. It makes me feel important to think I have some special insight into the artist’s meaning.  

                Is This It is a classic Strokes experience. All the songs kind of sound the same, but they all sound great so it doesn’t matter. I can put this on and it’ll always feel like a bop. I see The Strokes as the bridge between my earlier music tastes and what would eventually become my underground phase. Underground in the sense that I pretended my music taste was better than everyone else’s because it wasn’t on the radio. AKA I became deeply pretentious. That’ll be the next phase of posts, too. Cannot wait to dunk on my younger self who thought they were all high and mighty for liking The Strokes.  

You can listen to the album here