Gordon Raphael

Thank you for Making Is This It 1 record of the decade (NME) and 2 (Rolling Stone)

From Fact Magazine Online:

With their debut album The Strokes caused a sea change in mainstream pop music in the US, but particularly in the UK. Suddenly three minute garage rock jams were the pinnacle of cool, and indie landfill ruled Britain's charts for the next nine years. But what the copyists could never match was the attention to detail and the hoarse, heartfelt emotion that The Strokes brought to their music. When Julian Casablancas begins this album with "Can't you see I'm trying / I don't even like it", it conjures up a hundred images - of forced fun, of relationships resigned to mutual antipathy - and it follows one of the greatest opening samples of any record. The perfect three-and-a-half minute pop songs on Is This It might seem casual, but they're constructed with craftmanship and care: check the rhythmic scrapes of fingers on guitar string that punctuate 'Trying Your Luck.' Not for nothing did these songs become the stuff of universal consciousness. So as the decade fades, and mainstream indie rock continues to nauseate and bore in equal measures, do me a favour. Forget The Killers, forget T4, forget The View, forget Colin fucking Murray, and just listen to this album, contextless. Is This It's status as the decade's most influential guitar record may be a double-edged sword, but its status as the decade's best pop album shouldn't be in doubt. [Tam Gunn]