The fervidly romantic ambivalence of a downtown New York guy (or girl, for that matter) -- that's what Julian Casablancas, who writes and sings all the Strokes' songs, writes and sings about. Jobs, bars, beds: stay or go? And when he sings, earnestly crooning like Mel Torme when he begins a verse, then caustically (and a little comically) muttering like Lou Reed to end it, he does so through a filter that distorts his voice electronically, allusively -- it's the voice pleading through the intercom from the apartment vestibule, the voice leaving a message on the cell at 4 a.m. It's the voice of New York, or anyway youngish New York, at its most intimate.
With love, the
NYT [rwalks/walks]
smothers the Strokes--as if the backlash hasn't already...