Barely Legal: Turning 21 with Is This It

As my twenty-first birthday quickly approaches and with it the looming threat of becoming an actual adult, I’ve been spending much of my time reminiscing and clinging to the last of my adolescent and teenage years. To do so, I’ve been re-indulging in practically every interest I’ve had throughout the past ten years – boy bands, TV shows, movies, clothes, etc. – as the day grows closer and closer. Throughout this process, I’ve realized that I’ve fully grown out of almost everything except for one album. Born just three months after me in July 2001, debut album Is This It by indie rock moguls, The Strokes, has stuck with me throughout almost my entire life.

Before I was old enough or cared enough to conceptualize what and who I was listening to, I was listening to The Strokes. As a child, I’d sit in the backseat of my mom’s SUV while the album’s singles played on the now-defunct Live 105. The album’s title track, “Is This It,” was the soundtrack to many lonesome lunch periods spent solo in the girls’ locker room at my high school. “Last Nite” was the score to my senior trip; it played at an indie rock night at a club in Brooklyn while my friends and I scream-sang and danced on the stage. “Alone, Together” has characterized my experience as a transfer student, trying to cope with the changes of starting over in a new university and new city.

As twenty-one draws nearer, I still find myself gravitating toward The Strokes’ debut album. The lyrics, sound, and tone of the album have grown, matured, and evolved right beside me. For every situation I’ve found myself in and for every emotion I’ve felt, there has been a way to connect it to a song from Is This It. The songs that I’ve listened to during an identity crisis will also be songs I put on when I’m inexplicably happy, and songs that make me ugly cry one day could be the score to my six-hour homework bender the next. There are not many albums I’ve come across that have had the same effect on me I’ve unsuccessfully tried to describe the album’s significance to my life and to my coming of age – a comfort album, a safety blanket, a sense of nostalgia for a simpler time. But no matter how I try to describe it, how many times I listen to it, or how old I get I don’t think that I will ever grow out of Is This It.

Aside from its significance to the soundtrack to my young adulthood, Is This It is arguably The Strokes’ most culturally significant release to date. Later to be heralded as one of the most prolific, creative, and sustainable indie rock bands of the 21st century, this debut is just the opposite – simple and gritty garage rock. Is This It was not groundbreaking by any means. There is no ‘musical genius’ to be debated within this eleven-song collection. What gives the album its remarkability and longevity is the ingenious formula that the band used when writing. Every song boils down to the same key element: repetition. Simple drums, bouncy basslines, downstroked and punk reminiscent rhythm guitar, melodically hazy lead guitar, and monotonous, riddled-with-strep-throat sounding vocals characterize Is This It.

However basic this debut may sound on the surface, there are few albums in modern music history that had a similar impact on their respective genres. The Strokes were the main proponents of New York’s underground indie rock scene in the early 2000s and were thrust into the mainstream with the album’s three singles: “Hard to Explain,” “Someday,” and “Last Nite,” the latter two revered as essential to the genre. The Strokes have taken the baton from their indie and alternative influences from the mid-to-late 80s and seamlessly integrated what are now known as quintessential elements of indie rock. Most notably, the single “Someday” bears a striking tonal and thematic resemblance to The Smiths’ “How Soon Is Now?” where the utterly depressing lyrics are camouflaged by the danceable instrumental track, and both hits have become classic records.

The Strokes, and by extension, Is This It, are an iceberg that music appreciators have barely scratched the surface of; however, despite their overnight rise to fame and more experimental follow-up albums, The Strokes never lost their original gritty charm that is so prevalent on Is This It. The album laid a perfect and strong foundation for The Strokes to build off of and evolve from, and elements of these original eleven can be heard frequently throughout their six-album discography. Although it may not be the ‘perfect’ album, or the most creative, or the most famous of The Strokes’ releases, Is This It will have a permanent place in my music library and almost every playlist I make for the foreseeable future. The playability and longevity contained on Is This It are hard to come by on newer indie rock releases, and those that may have similar characteristics do not accomplish what The Strokes did in a 35 minute listen. “Hard to Explain” will always be the song I listen to in the car with my younger brother, “The Modern Age” will always remind me of my best friend, and my housemates will have to suffer through hearing “Barely Legal” repeatedly blasting on the day that I finally turn twenty-one.

Article by Lily Roshan

Design by Heather Highland