Strokes Room on Fire (RCA)
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Making the follow-up to a breakout record has proved too much for a lot of good bands. The Stone Roses weren’t much more than a pre-Nirvana cult favorite over here, but in the UK the Roses’ 1989 debut, a visionary hybrid of psychedelic guitar pop and dance music, was the high point of the Madchester era. Band and album were greeted by the British music press with a reverence that transcended its trademark hyperbole. It felt like the beginning of a brilliant career; as it turned out, it was about as far as the band would go. A legal battle with their label didn’t help, but the Roses were slow to get back into the studio and even slower once they were there. Tempted by an unlimited recording budget and unable to agree on a musical direction, they took five years to make another album. When Second Coming finally saw the light in 1994, it was overblown and out of touch, seemingly the work of lazy, presumptuous Zeppelin wannabes. The public was no longer interested, and within a year and a half the band had broken up.
But occasionally a band seems to realize that just staying the course might be achievement enough. To take small steps is daring in its own way, one that’s more responsive to the challenges of the artistic process than to the demands of hype.
Ignoring the hype and going about your business seems like a healthy strategy for making a second album. But playing live is another story: when you’ve been alternately touted and dismissed the way the Strokes have, the live show is a chance to set the record straight. The Sunday before last at the Aragon Ballroom, they came out like they still had something to prove. Opening with “Under Control,” the five-piece seemed to have adopted the line “I don’t wanna waste your time” as its philosophy. Five of the first eight songs were from Room on Fire, whose release had been pushed back to October 28; the new material wasn’t as conducive to pogoing as “Someday,” which showed up fourth on the set list, but the crowd remained enthralled.
