The Morning Benders, Real Estate and others release Strokes tribute album.

It's hard to forget The Stroke's debut album, Is This It.  If you were anything like me, it completely changed the way I looked at music as a youngin.  In a time where Nu Metal was waaay too relavent for any point in history, we had a bunch of Eddie Vedder copycats that were doing a bad job (Creed and the like), and you couldn't walk two feet without experiencing the total sensory overload of pop music, The Strokes dawned their capes and saved music as we know it, shifting our view of what popular music could and should be.

We went from this:

FUTURE HALLWAY

To this:

The sea change prompted fans and record companies alike to pay attention to unsigned bands, injecting interest and momentum into independant music around the world.  Gary Mullholland of The Observer also notes that the success of The Strokes 1960's influenced garage rock music "made every forgotten art-pop experiment of the late 70s and early 80s instantly hip and ripe for reinvention".  If there's a more integral part of our current music landscape today, for better or for worse, it's reinvention.  So all those garage rock bands, electro synth artists, avant pop, chill wave, folky chamber pop groups, you can thank the Strokes.

Stereogum and a few bands including The Morning Benders, Real Estate, and Peter Bjorn and John agree and have made their appreciation of the seminal album known by covering each song off of Is This It and releasing it for free through Stereogum.  Whether it's Real Estate's half-speed version of "Barely Legal" or The Morning Benders disco-lounge version of "Last Night", each band shows their appreciation through covering and follows it up with a brief paragraph on what the album meant to them.  It's a cool feature for an album that deserves nothing but mythical status.

Here's a tracklist and download links:

Stroked: A Tribute to Is This It:



01 Peter Bjorn and John: "Is This It"

02 Chelsea Wolfe: "The Modern Age"

03 Frankie Rose: "Soma"

04 Real Estate: "Barely Legal"

05 Wise Blood: "Someday"

06 Austra: "Alone, Together"

07 The Morning Benders: "Last Night"

08 Owen Pallett: "Hard to Explain"

09 Heems: "New York City Cops"

10 Deradoorian: "Trying Your Luck"

11 Computer Magic: "Take It or Leave It"




Click here for a free download of the zip files or click here to go to Stereogum and stream the songs.