Album Review: The Strokes - Comedown Machine

The fifth album from The Strokes arrives with some trepidation, especially after the horrible efforts displayed on 2011's Angles. Frontman Julian Casablancas is back in the studio after his forced self-removal on the previous effort and while it's mostly for the better, the album itself sure isn't anything to write home about.

Sure, Casablancas has enough swagger to sink a sailboat, a craft he's honed to perfection, but Comedown Machine feels somewhat contractual, all pieced together, flipping from the old and the new. That's not say it's necessarily bad – the fresh opening strut of the slinky Tap Out borrows the groove from Michael Jackson's Wanna Be Startin' Somethin' and builds upon it with a mighty-infectious chorus and lyrics that sum it all up – “Decide my past/Define my life/Don't ask questions/Cause I don't know why”.

From there it's a scattered affair that sees the NYC five searching for their place in 2013 and perhaps even the future – All The Time is vintage Strokes while the rather horrendous and schizophrenic One Way Trigger features a forced Casablancas falsetto and little else of interest. The disco-funk of Welcome To Japan is the best song local innovators Last Dinosaurs never wrote, while showing off not only just how much work guitarist Nick Valensi did on Sia's Clap Your Hands, but also recycling it right here.

Comedown Machine is reasonably solid overall, however unchallenging it may seem. It's all well and good to fulfill a contract but now five albums in, The Strokes feel like a band that should well and truly be considered modern legends and, well, aren't really delivering the goods to claim that title.