Shout Out Louds

It’s the disappointment that really gets me. Granted, *Julian Casablancas *was never the most spirited of performers – the Thames whale has plenty more charisma than him, even in its current state – but even the low level of personality and appeal that he may have held five years ago, in the lead up to the release of their debut album, has quite visibly ebbed.

Where he used to cling to his microphone, seemingly for dear life, like his sanity depended on his screaming out about those New York city cops, now he swaggers, stumbles and slurs his way about the stage like a drunken degenerate with little else to do but find the next bottle of beer and the remote ready for another night in front of the gogglebox.

Even the oldest and, arguably, best songs like ‘Last Nite’ and _‘Hard To Explain’ _seemed to fall flat. While the tunes are hardly likely to fail in front of these adoring masses regardless of performance, you can’t help but feel there should be something more to it. There is no verve or desire about the most part of this band any more and it is a sad progression.

While *Albert Hammond *does, as ever, appear to be slightly more animated than his colleagues (but that’s hardly saying a lot) and, as ever, there’s little to say about *Fabrizio Moretti *– everyone knows that drummers don’t get bored because all they do is hit stuff, and hitting stuff is fun – the other two stand nonplussed in their near-anonymity just playing away at their instruments, almost hidden by the flare of the disco lights surrounding them. Just doing their job.

That debut record, Is This It, was too much for anyone to live up to. Even the lovable quintet that emerged from the New York underground to become the thrift store cognoscenti that would influence a generation of indie kids across the globe. Their immaculate style helped them to be heralded as the new media darlings and the band every magazine wanted on its cover. Times and fashions changed but the fans’ opinions haven’t, lauding and appreciating songs from their follow up, Room On Fire _just as benevolently as tracks from new album _First Impressions Of Earth, despite it receiving lukewarm reviews across the board.

So there it is. *The Strokes *are a tight unit. They’re pros. They play their shows to people who want to hear their favourite songs played live, caught up in mass hysteria and amateur hyperbole. There is nothing more to this show.

Having supplied the title four years ago, so inviting to the lazy writer, it would be too easy to ask whether this really is it. Unfortunately that question could only be posed in the rhetoric in which in was originally intended. And sadly this _is _it. And that's where the disappointment lies.

Photo courtesy of Andrew Future