Buy Now
- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
-
Mar 16, 2011Disjointed, hyperactive, experimental, whatever. Angles is the album to beat this year.
-
Mar 16, 2011Prepare to be smitten all over again, as the NYC outfit release a brilliant fourth album.
-
Mar 22, 2011Best of all, Angles captures that now-all-too-rare excitement of musicians playing off of one another.
-
Mar 22, 2011Angles is the best Strokes album since their 2001 debut, and they still sound just as fresh and youthful as they did when they released that record.
-
Mar 22, 2011Once miscast as game-changing saviors of the underground, The Strokes have proven once again with Angles that they are actually one of the era's top mainstream pop-rock acts, uniquely gifted at crafting catchy, radio-ready rock songs at a time when such a thing seems like a quaint remnant of a distant past.
-
Q MagazineMay 2, 2011Angles fits 10 songs into a brisk 34 minutes and doesn't waste time gunning for gravitas. [Apr 2011, p.92]
-
UncutMar 29, 2011Perhaps they should have been more democratic in the past, because this is a terrific record that plays to The Strokes; Strengths and also adds fresh colour to their palette. [Apr 2011, p.79]
-
Mar 24, 2011Angles doesn't feel like an over-indulgent record, nor one that speaks of a dearth of ideas.
-
Mar 22, 2011There aren't many instantly identifiable bands that can mess with the familiar recipe while somehow also honoring it, but that's precisely what the Strokes have achieved on Angles, an album as warm as it is cool.
-
Mar 21, 2011Angles, The Strokes' long awaited fourth LP, stands as the group's most eclectic album to date.
-
Mar 18, 2011While Angles lacks a definite image, it is the band's best purely musical statement, and as the band members explore their 30s, perhaps it is time for them to retire their young, aggressive punk image and become successes in the first sense of the word -- strictly musical.
-
Mar 16, 2011Indecision and infighting have rarely sounded this solid and inspired.
-
Mar 16, 2011Angles ends up being one of the group's more compelling efforts, rather than the casualty of experimentation it could have been.
-
Mar 16, 2011On Angles, the Strokes' trick isn't fooling us into thinking these tunes fell to Stanton Street fully formed (though that occasionally happens, as with the goofy fake-reggae lark "Machu Picchu"). It's that a group of reunited rock stars somehow come on like wide-eyed kids.
-
Mar 16, 2011While The Strokes have outgrown any notions of being rock's saviours, in doing so they could just have delivered what might be their best album since Is This It. It's certainly their most diverse.
-
Mar 16, 2011With its sudden-U-turn songwriting and curt execution, Angles is the best album that Casablancas, guitarists Nick Valensi and Albert Hammond Jr., bassist Nikolai Fraiture and drummer Fabrizio Moretti have made since 2001's Is This It, the cannonball that inaugurated the modern-garage era.
-
Mar 25, 2011A band exploring a new sound is great, but that's what demos and the studio are for. Some of what The Strokes seem to be aiming for with Angles unfortunately isn't realized.
-
Mar 28, 2011Angles manages litheness; First Impressions was all sludge. And despite the rumored ills surrounding the recording process, the resulting album paints the band as re-energized and optimistic, playful in a way their last record so detrimentally wasn't.
-
Mar 21, 2011The good news is that The Strokes have delivered a good album. The bad news is that for all its throwback production, it doesn't really sound much like The Strokes, and many of their longtime fans are probably going to be disappointed in an album that doesn't retreat to the sound of the band's glory days with its tail between its legs.
-
Mar 23, 2011It took awhile, but the Strokes have ultimately rewarded their fans' enduring patience.
-
Mar 24, 2011Having been away from being a working band for a half decade, the Strokes have returned with a more polished take on their classic sound. Different: yes. Disaster: absolutely not!
-
Mar 22, 2011Ultimately, Angles' best moments are reassuring rather than exciting, offering proof that the Strokes can still make an album together, and hope that it'll come more naturally to them next time.
-
Mar 21, 2011Angles isn't perfect, but if it marks a new phase of creativity and togetherness for the group, then it could be more of a success than even Is This It.
-
Mar 16, 2011Angles reveals a newfound earnestness: For the first time, it actually feels like the guys are trying.
-
Mar 16, 2011If nothing else, Angles makes it impossible to predict where the Strokes will go next.
-
May 10, 2011The result is mixed and at times strained, but a spark still lies within.
-
May 2, 2011When all is said and done, Angles could make for an exciting introduction to a new chapter for The Strokes, or it could be a disappointing swan song.
-
MojoApr 22, 2011Angles homespun demeanour is key to its appeal. There are flaws. [Apr 2011, p.95]
-
Apr 18, 2011They're maturing gracelessly, still in love with the fool's gold myth of rock and roll, which is precisely why Angles succeeds as a record.
-
Mar 22, 2011Is this it? Don't feel ashamed if that's your initial reaction to the Strokes' new album, the natty New York rockers' first in five years. Stick with it, and you'll be rewarded with a record that's completely oblivious to expectations and past glories.
-
Mar 22, 2011The Strokes have managed to culture a great sense of the schizophrenic on Angles, mapping polar tones in tandem to produce a record that feels both confused and entirely deliberate.
-
Mar 21, 2011If the Strokes keep their word that better things are yet to come, Angles could be seen in a different light in due time, the album where they worked through their late-in-coming growing pains and found themselves at a fork in the road, not the end of it.
-
Mar 21, 2011Angles is a document of the Strokes operating more as a task force than a real band; even though the album's allegedly fractured recording sessions resulted in the first Strokes LP to feature writing credits from every member of the band, this is more of a show of individuals tinkering with each track rather than any true cooperative effort.
-
Mar 18, 2011Comeback albums, it seems, are not just for other bands to do.
-
Mar 16, 2011Angles ends in a horribly frustrating manner, with none of the assurance of "Take it or Leave It" or "Red Light." No, Angles, even in ending with its strongest song, dies the way it lived: in sheer ambiguity.
-
Mar 21, 2011Though this band was routinely slapped with claims of 1970s plagiarism upon their arrival, it's unlikely that many people have ever mistaken a Strokes song for one by Lou Reed or Television. So it's ironic that their mimicry can be uncanny on Angles.
-
Mar 28, 2011Most of Angles finds The Strokes trying as hard as possible not to sound like The Strokes. This is done, in part, by recycling the least palatable parts of their last LP, and interpolating them with weird, near-atonal choruses.
-
Mar 22, 2011Coming from a band who blatantly don't want to be a band any more, Angles is inevitably disjointed. But it's not disastrous.
-
Mar 21, 2011These songs don't sound anxious, or troubled, just lacklustre.
-
Mar 17, 2011Plenty of great records have been made in an atmosphere of terrible acrimony. But Angles just sounds like an album made by people who really didn't want to make an album.
-
Mar 22, 2011The band's tight, and every song contains at least a few interesting musical ideas, but the album as a whole comes across less like a creative mess and more like a stoned-battle-of-the-bands gone wrong.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
-
Positive: 216 out of 266
-
Mixed: 41 out of 266
-
Negative: 9 out of 266
-
Mar 23, 2011
-
Oct 3, 2011
-
Mar 28, 2011