Weird how long it seems since Room On Fire - everyone's forgotten about the Strokes. Actually, the really weird thing is the boredom creeping over the new music scene: It's not that Casablancas has stopped being hyped - everyone has.
"Can't you find some other guy?" Goes the bridge to The End Has No End. Well, no. Casablancas hasn't been replaced, Room on Fire is still a great record, and this is a bloody perfect single. Obviously, everyone who matters already has it - Julian's lazy/wired vocals, Valensi's tightly wound but somehow loping riff, like a lower East side Slash.
Obviously, everyone who buys it will get it for the B-side, the spectacularly right Clash cover Clampdown. This is ragged glory: Guitars that scream and resonate, Casablancas at his paranoid best and a final collapse into thirty seconds of feedback. So they didn't change rock and roll... Who cares?
more 