Concert Date: Wednesday, 3rd December 2003.
Review Date: Thursday, 4th December 2003.
Review Date: Thursday, 4th December 2003.
When the so called saviours of rock come rolling into your town, you've got to go and see what they're all about live. The Strokes newly released album, Room On Fire had received a lukewarm reception from the music press. Some we're disappointed that it was just a watered down version of Is This It, and others thought it was as good as followup to their debut album that they could have expected.
Personally I'm in the latter bracket. It was always going to be hard to followup Is This It, which re-sparked guitar rock, and Room On Fire was a more than respectable effort.
From reading previous reviews of US shows, I knew two things. There was probably going to be no encore, and the whole shazam would last approximately an hour and ten minutes. So, I decided in the end that whatever that Julian Casablancas and co. were going to thrown at me, I'd invelop tenfold.
Waiting around for what seemed for an eternity, the boys finally came on stage around 9.45pm, and promptly jumped into their set on the right note with a terrific performance of I Can't Win. The crowd goes wild - looks like we have a party on our hands!
The songs have transferred amazingly well from record to a live setting; the crowd pleasers, which included New York City Cops, Last Nite and The Modern Age were brilliant, executed perfectly, and Julian's voice was on top form.
It's funny that Julian always seems deadpan when he talks. He doesn't seem to get excited by much, now and again after a song he'd thank the crowd, and say something to the effect of
"wow, big crowd". He seemed quite overawed about the attention he was getting. Enjoy the feeling Julian. You're on top of the world at the moment. Don't look over the ledge too far in amazement and fall off...
The new songs fitted in really well with the older songs from Is This It (who would have guessed eh?). Reptilia and the current single, 12:51 were the standout new tracks, with Under Control and Automatic Stop filling out the setlist nicely.
The mixture of old and new songs in the setlist were well placed. I had read one US review a few days ago that slated the setlist order, complaining that just as the crowd got funked up by a Strokes classic, a new song would come in and the energy in the venue totally evaporated. This wasn't the case in Cardiff, probably because we were eagerly awaiting for the new album, and when it was released it, we totally assimilated the album's lyrics and vibe into our language.
An hour or so later, with the last few seconds of Take It Or Leave It closing the set, Julian says thanks again, the band waves goodbye and they all walk off stage. The show comes to an end. Everyone waits around in the darkness waiting for the encore, and then the house lights come on. No encore. Everybody walks out of the arena not quite knowing what to feel, myself included. I think I was hungry for more. I guess you could say I felt slightly cheap changed.
I can only compare the show as a really tasty meal that came in too small a portion. Myself and undoubtedly countless others came out of the shows wanting second helpings. I wasn't disappointed with the show, just I had such a great time in the first hour that when it was over, I couldn't really come to terms that there wasn't more...
Overall a good show, considering the material that The Strokes played. It would have been silly to try and pan out the songs so the show would be longer. The boys played the material as well as they could, almost perfectly in fact. If a band releases two albums that are half an hour in length each, you're gonna end up with a show lasting one hour. So I guess everything adds up.
Luckily for The Strokes, time is on their side. Two years down the line when they release their third album, myself and probably 75% of tonight's crowd would go and see them live again.
So I'm expecting a respective hour and a half set from them the next time.
