open your ears

The Strokes | Hard To Explain

This is an interesting one. This is not a song I liked from the get-go. This is a song that really took its time in winning me over. The Strokes in general. I really love them nowadays, but a few years ago I would have said that they maybe have one or two nice songs. But man…was I wrong.

This song is so noisy, but in the nicest way possible, not in an Oasis kind of way (more on this in another blog post). Right from the start, you get as much compression on all your sound sources as you could ever wish for. And it works so good. You never feel pressured by this wall of sound in any way.

If you’re familiar with the texture of The Strokes, you know what to expect of their guitar work and singer Julian Casablancas’ way with vocal melody and word play. Everything sits where it should sit. Nothing is superfluous. This is easier said than done. Not everyone has so much control over their artistic ideas.

But enough of that. Let’s jump to the music.

We start off with this drum machine-like drumbeat. And no…that’s no drum machine. That is Fabrizio Moretti on drums. The original demo was actually with drum machine, but not this version. The drums for this album were recorded in the most minimal way possible. One overhead microphone, one bass drum microphone and one snare drum microphone. For the people who don’t know what that means:
Nowadays you usually have 2 x Bass Drum Mics, 2 x Snare Drum Mics, 1 x Mic for each Tom, 1 x HiHat Mic and 2 x Overhead Mics (and maybe some Room Mics).

So the recording for this album was as stripped back as possible. Not only the drums, but just everything. And most of the recordings took place in a live setting. Which means all of the musicians were in the same room together, playing their music together and often finishing their song in one take. In the case of this song, the drum part was actually recorded separately, to get as clean a drum texture as possible. Everything else on this track was recorded afterwards.

So yeah…where were we? Oh yeah…the drum machine-like intro is immediately (00:06) followed by two heavily distorted guitars. Nikolai Fraiture’s bass guitar is actually quite clean in comparison to the rest. Because as soon as you hear Julian Casablancas’ vocals enter the chaos (00:33), you can also hear this lo-fi and distorted texture in his voice. And in a way that is so beautiful. All of them are working together to create this sonic landscape.

An interesting choice in arrangement and instrumentation are the changes between the two guitar players Nick Valensi and Albert Hammond Jr. You can easily make out their parts when listening with headphones or some good speakers. Nick Valensi is slightly on the left and Albert Hammond Jr. is on the right.

And now listen to what happens when they change between the pre-chorus and the chorus (at about 01:45):
In the verse Albert Hammond Jr. plays the lead guitar part and Nick Valensi the rhythm guitar part. In the pre-chorus and onward they switch parts. Sure…their guitars sound different, but if you look at it from an arranger or musician standpoint, it makes so much sense too. It’s just not as boring to play when you switch up your parts.

Even if those parts are already cool as hell. You see: the interesting thing about a lot of Strokes songs is that one guitar often doubles the vocal melody. In this case Julian’s chorus melody is doubled by Nick’s guitar. But before that happens, listen to how Nick builds up to the chorus. When Julian sings “…when we go back” at 01:40 you can already hear Nick warming up his guitar and then he drops into those melodies together with Julian.

After this driving chorus we hear a beautiful break (02:05). No one is playing and everyone is waiting for the others to start again. And I think it’s just great that this pause didn’t get cleaned up in the mix. You can clearly hear an amp in the background making noise. Again, that gives you such a nice live feeling.

One of my favorite parts of this song happens just before the pre-chorus (02:57) when Albert Hammond Jr. does this slide up on his guitar and then stays on those eighth notes until the end of the chorus. And the great part is it’s always the same chord. That’s so cool. Just try it. Listen to it and try to air-guitar that part. It’s so fun and it makes you feel like a badass because you can just stay on your position when everyone around you shifts and moves.

In quantum mechanics there is this concept called Heisenberg’s indeterminacy principle. This principle says that when you concentrate on one point, all the other points get more uncertain. Why do I bring this up? Because I‘ve always felt this song suits this concept very well. The closer you listen to a single instrument, the less you really hear of it. What you can hear is all the distortion surrounding it but certainly not the instrument itself.

I listen to this song every now and then, when I need a quick energy boost. I think that’s what it tries to convey. It’s pure energy from start to finish. They don’t slow down and they really just keep building. In my personal opinion Is This It is one of the finest records of the 21st century. Period. It’s a quick listen, it has fun and exciting textures and it never bores you. Hard To Explain is just a prime example for what this album can do with you.