Angles (The Strokes album)
| Angles | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Studio album by The Strokes | ||||
| Released | March 18, 2011 | |||
| Recorded | February–November 2010 | |||
| Studio |
Electric Lady Studios and Avatar Studios in New York City; One Way Studios in Upstate New York |
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| Length | 34:27 | |||
| Label | ||||
| Producer | The Strokes & Gus Oberg, with Joe Chiccarelli | |||
| The Strokes chronology | ||||
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| Singles from Angles | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Aggregate scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Metacritic | 71/100 |
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |    |
| The A.V. Club | B+ |
| Entertainment Weekly | B− |
| The Guardian | |
| The Independent | |
| NME | 7/10 |
| Pitchfork | 5.9/10 |
| PopMatters |   |
| Rolling Stone | |
| Spin | 8/10 |
Angles is the fourth studio album by the American rock band the Strokes, released on March 18, 2011 by RCA Records. It is their first album since First Impressions of Earth (2006), their longest gap to date between studio albums.
After touring in support of First Impressions of Earth, the Strokes went on an extended hiatus in 2007 and then regrouped two years later to begin writing new material for a fourth album. The album took more than two years to materialize, with the band recording live demos of 18 songs before heading into Avatar Studios in New York with producer Joe Chiccarelli, but without Casablancas. Not long after recording began, however, the band became frustrated with both Chiccarelli's reserved production style and Casablancas' absence. Only one song from these recording sessions, "Life Is Simple in the Moonlight", remained in its original form on the album's track listing. The rest of the songs were either scrapped or reworked by the band with engineer Gus Oberg at guitarist Albert Hammond, Jr.'s home studio in Port Jervis, Upstate New York.
While Casablancas’ disengagement may have been by design, guitarist Nick Valensi found the whole experience deeply dissatisfying. "I won’t do the next album if we make it like this. No way. It was awful– just awful. Working in a fractured way, not having a singer there. I’d show up certain days and do guitar takes by myself, just me and the engineer." He added that most of Casablancas' ideas and suggestions were written "in really vague terms" and then sent to the band by email, leaving the others without much to go on. In an interview with Pitchfork, Casablancas stated: "When I'm there, people might wait for me to say something. I think it took me being a little mute to force the initiative".
These stories and reports stating the album was written separately by the band from Casablancas however, were untrue. The vocals were indeed recorded separately by Casablancas, but they were written together, in session, with the rest of the band present. Casablancas later said, "The funny thing about Angles is there was all that weird talk about recording it separately. We just had dinner in L.A. and we were all talking about it. And they forget that we sat in a room in a studio and were writing songs forever. That's where we did the whole record. All the parts, the songs, in a room, together. We recorded them with two mics, and that was the foundation, and then we were going to go track the official recording. That's when they went and recorded stuff, and when the 'Julian wasn't there,' BS or whatever [started]. That was just because logistically, we'd never done a record like that".
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