The Strokes - Is This It (International Pressing) - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Clocking in at 36 minutes, Is This It? packs it's perfect length with stellar songs that draw inspiration from all over the map. Among the many highlights are Last Nite with it's insistent motown backbeat and choppy johnny thunders-like guitar solo, Barely Legal, sounding like 1980s-era Cure fronted by a saucy Iggy Pop, and the jangly Someday with it's hairshirt of vulnerability from a bad break-up. While frontman Julian Casablancas drawls like Lou Reed through a busted intercom, guitarists Nick Valensi and Albert Hammond Jr do Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd proud as their sinewy chords intertwine to great effect on the angular The Modern Age and equally neurotic Alone, Together.

RADIOHEAD / OK COMPUTER - CD - Even at it's most adventurous - such as the complex, multi-segmented InchParanoid AndroidInch - the band is tight, melodic, and muscular, and Thom Yorke's voice effortlessly shifts from a sweet falsetto to vicious snarls. It's a thoroughly astonishing demonstration of musical virtuosity and becomes even more impressive with repeated listens, which reveal subtleties like electronica rhythms, eerie keyboards, odd time signatures, and complex syncopations. - Yet all of this would simply be showmanship if the songs weren't strong in themselves, and OK Computer is filled with moody masterpieces, from the shimmering InchSubterranean Homesick AlienInch and the sighing InchKarma PoliceInch to the gothic crawl of InchExit Music (For a Film).Inch OK Computer is the album that establishes Radiohead as one of the most inventive and rewarding bands of the '90s. - Using the textured soundscapes of The Bends as a launching pad, Radiohead delivered another startlingly accomplished set of modern guitar rock with OK Computer. The anthemic guitar heroics present on Pablo Honey and even The Bends are nowhere to be heard here. Radiohead have stripped away many of the obvious elements of guitar rock, creating music that is subtle and textured yet still has the feeling of rock roll.

2020 . The New Abnormal is the sixth studio album by The Strokes. Produced by Rick Rubin, it is their first album in seven years, following Comedown Machine (2013), and their first since the Future Present Past EP (2016). The album artwork features the 1981 painting Bird on Money by American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. The New Abnormal is packed full of the razor-sharp hooks, vintage vibes and NYC cool that made the Strokes an early-2000s phenomenon.