IS THIS IT

On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Strokes album Is This It, the author asks, Why wasn’t it “it?”

“Every ten to fifteen years, the rock people theorized, there is a cultural reset,” reports music critic Hyden. “Punk did that. Nirvana did that. And now The Strokes were going to do it.” Except they didn’t. With the release of the Strokes’ first full-length record, Is This It, on October 9, 2001, the New York City band had everything going for them: an album of bangers embraced by fans and critics alike, smashing good looks and sartorial splendor, and the eyes and ears of the music press. They were supposed to be rock’s saviors, avengers of what Hyden calls “a stagnated music culture dominated by nü-metal mooks and plastic-mannequin boy bands.” But the backlash soon came for the Strokes. They were just a bunch of overhyped rich kids, the argument went, who didn’t have the goods, as evidenced by the lackluster reception to their post–Is This It output. Persuasively, Hyden takes the position that the failure of the Strokes to sustain their popularity wasn’t really about the band or its product; it was about the changing tastes of the music-listening public—in fact, “the matter of bands and groups generally being less romanticized now” is “what this whole book is about.” This makes the book’s true subject the listener. Hyden, who listens for a living, misses the days when rock bands were king: “I feel wistful about a mass consumerist institution that once seemed omnipresent but no longer exists.” His book is an intrepid, music-genre vivisection that nevertheless reinforces the truism that any work of art criticism is as much about the critic as about the subject.

A graceful eulogy for rock bands, centered on rock’s last best hope.