The Strokes
12:51
(Rough Trade Records)
06/10/2003
This long awaited single from the
New York rockers second album will be greeted with a sigh
of relief, with enough cumulative power to blow Peter Kay
of the
roof a terraced house. This will be done by both those who were cursing hearing
the overplayed tunes from the successful debut album ‘Is This It’ and
wishing they’d do something new, with The Strokes aficionados having
dreamt about this track for so long.
Musically speaking, if you were
to put critical spectacles on, then ’12:51’ in a nutshell is little more
than a reworking of ‘Soma’ from the debut album.
That said, Soma was such an underrated track on the album
that maybe it deserves some more prominence, which is just
as well because it is going to get lots of playtime by
DJs around the country. Julian Casablancas continues to
defy his privileged upbringing and sings the defiant rock
N roll lyrics with passion:
‘Fuck the winter, lets
party.”
Whether this is enough to satisfy
music lovers that The Strokes have moved up a level is
probably a matter best
left until 20/10/03 when the new album ‘Room On Fire’ is
on general release.
David Adair
