The Strokes

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The Strokes a decade after the debut

That was it
Let's face it: popular music is a lie. But it's the lie we crave: that the Beatles taught us how to love, that the Pistols taught us to be fierce, and that the Strokes — with their debut long-player released 10 years ago this week — delivered us from a nu-metal and boy-band purgatory into a sleek and sexy modern age.
By DANIEL BROCKMAN | October 12, 2011

Coachella 2011 Photos: The Strokes, The Presets and The National

Coachella | Indio, CA | April 16, 2011
Concert photos of bands performing at the 12th Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival
By JANICE CHECCHIO | April 28, 2011

Coachella builds a sweaty buzz over three days in the California desert

Tough acts to follow
Coachella builds a sweaty buzz over three days in the California desert
By MICHAEL MAROTTA | April 19, 2011

By | January 01, 0001

Mistle Thrush reunite, remain indefinable

Waking from a dream
It's a fun bit of Boston rock trivia that on September 23, 1991, homegrown post-punk band Bullet LaVolta played WFNX's fifth-birthday show at Axis with two relative unknowns: the Smashing Pumpkins and, on the eve of Nevermind 's release, Nirvana.
By MICHAEL MAROTTA | January 18, 2011

Eleven discs to listen for early 2011

James Blake, PJ Harvey, Cut Copy lead the way
James Blake, PJ Harvey, Cut Copy lead '11
By DANIEL BROCKMAN | December 29, 2010

By | January 01, 0001

Holy rollers

Ten pounds of rock in a six-song Boo Box
This record grabs you by the throat from measure one.
By SAM PFEIFLE | March 10, 2010

Review: Julian Casablancas at the Paradise

Julian Casablancas, live at the Paradise Rock Club, January 8, 2010
Casablancas's solo debut, Phrazes for the Young (RCA), is a bizarre and twisted romp through sophisticated musical stylings that, especially in a live setting, sound light years away from the compact garage minimalism of early Strokes. This was evident from the first notes of the show.
By DANIEL BROCKMAN | January 12, 2010

By | January 01, 0001

Prep rally

Rock's rich history of boarding-school brats
Much of the early backlash that followed the Strokes' meteoric rise had to do with the idea that a '00s punk revival couldn't be spearheaded by a band of moneyed prep-school twerps — as if boarding school and rock stars didn't go together like marmalade and scones.
By DANIEL BROCKMAN | January 05, 2010

Stroke of genius

Julian Casablancas goes it alone
Julian Casablancas is in control, for better or worse. Better, in the sense that he is finally seeing the release of his debut solo album, Phrazes for the Young (RCA), in which he steps out of the stripped-down style of the Strokes — his blockbuster unit for the past decade — and unveils a kaleidoscopic world of lush dreamscapes, arpeggiated classicism, and haunting balladry.
By DANIEL BROCKMAN | January 05, 2010

By | January 01, 0001

WFNX's top 101 songs of the decade

The top 101 songs of the decade from WFNX 101.7 FM
Video of WFNX's top 101 songs of the decade
By WFNX AND PHOENIX STAFF | January 06, 2010

WFNX's top 101 songs in 2009

WFNX's most popular songs in 2009
Videos of the 101 most requested songs on WFNX in 2009
By WFNX AND PHOENIX STAFF | January 03, 2011

The Big Hurt: 10-year glitch

The Big Hurt: A major decade for music — minus the music
It boggles the mind that as recently as a decade ago, if you wanted to hear "Knockin' da Boots" by H-Town (and you did, believe me), you'd have to perform a primitive prayer ritual: you'd call some creepy guy with a really deep voice and beg him to play it, then wait by your radio for an hour in the hope that he'd answer your plea.
By DAVID THORPE | December 15, 2009

By | January 01, 0001

Julian Casablancas | Phrazes for the Young

RCA (2009)
Someday, a great rock film will be made. The opening shot is of a wasted rock star, bejeweled and clad in the finest leather, with white panthers circling the living room of his Parthenon-esque manse as he hits PLAY on a comically large reel-to-reel.
By DANIEL BROCKMAN | November 09, 2009

Review: Various artists | Tru Thoughts Covers

Tru Thoughts (2009)
Brighton-based label Tru Thoughts emerged at the dawn of the millennium with hit down-tempo/IDM acts like Bonobo.
By GUSTAVO TURNER | September 15, 2009

The Big Hurt: Attention whoring and headline parsing

Music news in brief
Slow news week.
By DAVID THORPE | September 15, 2009

LA story

Little Joy's journey starts at home
Ask people around here why they'd never move to LA and "the traffic" will reliably top the list. That sure sounds reasonable, but check it out: by not languishing in belching cars and rotting the sky for hours at a time, by not submitting to the forced downtime imposed by cities like Los Angeles...we're missing out on a ton of good music.
By MICHAEL BRODEUR | June 16, 2009

Phoenix | Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix

V2 (2009)
The French have a way of adopting bits of marginalized American culture — jazz, Faulkner, film noir — and transforming them into something headier, smokier.
By JAKE COHEN | May 12, 2009

Rogue wave

The allure of the music industry may be long gone, but SXSW can still attract the underground to its edges
These days, younger, wiser bands simply don't bat their eyelashes at the majors like they used to.
By MICHAEL BRODEUR | March 25, 2009

The Big Hurt: The Obama jubilance debriefing

When celebrities celebrate, metaphors suffer
Obama is the first president in history to drop a HOVA reference in a campaign speech by way of a little hand-brushy motion, and rappers turned out in droves to support him.
By DAVID THORPE | November 19, 2008

By | January 01, 0001

Buzzkill

The fickle state of the hype machine
In a self-affirming cover story on “the new speed of hype,” Spin magazine’s March issue profiles Vampire Weekend.
By CHRISTOPHER GRAY | March 05, 2008