The Strokes
12:51
(Rough Trade Records)
06/10/2003
This long awaited single from the New York rockers second album will be greeted with a sigh of relief, with enough cumulative power to blow Peter Kay of the roof a terraced house. This will be done by both those who were cursing hearing the overplayed tunes from the successful debut album ‘Is This It’ and wishing they’d do something new, with The Strokes aficionados having dreamt about this track for so long.
Musically speaking, if you were to put critical spectacles on, then ’12:51’ in a nutshell is little more than a reworking of ‘Soma’ from the debut album. That said, Soma was such an underrated track on the album that maybe it deserves some more prominence, which is just as well because it is going to get lots of playtime by DJs around the country. Julian Casablancas continues to defy his privileged upbringing and sings the defiant rock N roll lyrics with passion:
‘Fuck the winter, lets party.”
Whether this is enough to satisfy music lovers that The Strokes have moved up a level is probably a matter best left until 20/10/03 when the new album ‘Room On Fire’ is on general release.
David Adair
