“Not much of a chance”: The band Jack Black thought couldn’t get any better
Every band is going to want to outdo themselves whenever they make a new record. Even though it’s nice to have a signature sound that fans will eat up whenever you make something new, it’s in every artist’s nature to start thinking outside the box and making something that no one expects. Although Jack Black has always been open to seeing something new in rock and roll, he knew that some bands could also reach a peak so high that they could hardly eclipse it later in their careers.
Because Black had always been a connoisseur of great rock and roll. Though he had his favourites like Dio and Metallica to draw from when forming Tenacious D, he has some serious credibility as a rock fan, counting Pixies among one of his favourite acts and also claiming to have seen Nirvana before they had blown up while they toured for their debut album, Bleach.
But by the time Black was making movies like School of Rock, rock and roll itself was in a bit of a strange place. Some of the biggest names were still able to sell out stadiums like U2 and Green Day, but in terms of new music, a lot of people were still relying on either pop-punk bands or nu-metal acts to get them by, usually bowing to musical “gods” like Limp Bizkit and Creed. If you looked slightly underground, though, there was something a lot more aggressive happening in New York.
While they were considered an indie rock band at the time, The Strokes’ debut in 2001 with Is This It was enough to shake the foundations of rock. There were still hipsters who claimed that this was the only true rock and roll music out there, but listening back to tracks like ‘Last Nite’ and ‘The Modern Age,’ the band’s debut is practically a greatest hits album compared to the rest of their catalogue.
Although Black waited with bated breath in the 2000s to see what a new version of the band would sound like, he felt that nothing would eclipse what they had already done, saying, “I like The Strokes. I’m lookin’ forward to hearin’ the new Strokes record. There’s not very much of a chance that it’s gonna be as good as their first one, but if it is as good as their first one, then forget it. They’re The Beatles.”
And despite Room on Fire being more of the same in some respects, it’s hard to argue when the hooks still sounded great. ‘Reptilia’ is still among the greatest songs that the band ever recorded, and having their guitars filtered through strange effects pedals on ‘12:51’ and ‘The End Has No End’ was enough of a change of pace to keep them sounding like the next incarnation of rock and roll.
As it turned out, though, Black’s suspicions about them not measuring up did turn up when listening to First Impressions of Earth. While being far from a bad record, hearing them adopt the trappings of arena rock and making some strange left turns on tunes like ‘Juicebox’ made for a record that was chock full of great ideas but did way too much than it was capable of at the time.
But as they progressed further, seeing them embrace their quirkiness and start enjoying playing together again on The New Abnormal was a great way of reminding everyone what made them so endearing in the first place. The Strokes are far from The Beatles’ moniker that Black put on them, but they have still held together as one of the most interesting bands to see success since the turn of the millennium.
