What are you doing right now? Are you working? Eating? Looking at your phone? I want you to forget all that shit…
(takes your phone, throws it in the toilet)
I want you to come with me. You and I… we’ve had a shitty week. We’ve had a shitty year. We’ve had a shitty EVERYTHING. We are a tired and broken and despairing people, trapped in endless cycle of bloodshed and vitriol. But I have found an escape. I have found a musical oasis where no one is angry… where everyone is drunk and naked and every party has been Gronkified by at least 20 percent. Sit down…
(sits you down)
Put these on…
(gives you headphones)
Open this. Yes, you will think it’s stupid and corny for a moment, but just give it a chance. Today, I am making the brave decision to like something in public. These are the Struts, and they are here to make everything better.
The history of rock is riddled with late bloomers. Van Halen spent years and years playing backyard parties in Pasadena before they finally got a chance to make a debut album (they only needed two weeks to record the thing because they were already so polished). Appetite for Destruction took fifty-seven weeks before it finally hit #1 on the Billboard album chart. (I remember that “Welcome To The Jungle” was both the first AND third video off that album, because it failed to land on the first try and was re-released into circulation only after “Sweet Child O’ Mine” became a smash.)
And so we come to the curious case of The Struts, a bunch of pasty British lads who wear skinny jeans and make songs big enough to blow out a stadium loading dock. Everybody Wants, their debut album, was actually released two years ago, but failed to gain any traction here in the States (even now, you won’t find it listed at Metacritic). So, in a virtually unheard-of move, their label took the album, remastered it, swapped out three old songs for five new ones, and re-released it this March.
The result is a flawless piece of cock rock, one of those albums that sounds like its own greatest hits compilation. I never want to go through life NOT listening to it. I’ll never get sick of it (just kidding, I’ll probably burn it out by next week). Four songs in and I’m a horny eighth grader again, with none of the baggage. I am lying on my bed, cracking open cassette covers and looking for naked women in the liner art. The band effortlessly toggles between ripping off Thin Lizzy (“Put Your Money On Me”), the Darkness (“Everybody Wants”), Mott the Hoople (“Young Stars”), the Stones (“Kiss This”), and Queen (every song; in fact, lead singer Luke Spiller’s voice is a dead ringer for Freddie Mercury’s), and they do it all while maintaining a consistent voice of their own. That’s what the best art does, whether it’s a book or a film or even a piece of food. It’s someone taking something classic and recognizable and making it distinctly their own. Also, there’s a song about wife-swapping.
Back when Van Halen was still trying to make it big, lead singer David Lee Roth begged the Van Halen brothers to ditch moody Sabbath and Zeppelin covers and play music that people (okay, girls) could dance to. The Struts are also built around that same strategy, deploying every possible cheap trick—handclaps, shouts, choruses that you can sing along to by the end of the first spin—to get you off your ass. Even the power ballads are meant for standing. No track goes past the four-minute mark. Even though Spiller has the irony part down—occasionally winking and rolling his R’s for flair—there isn’t a second of this album that clocks by where he and his band aren’t sincerely trying to make you happy. And fuck, isn’t that nice? Isn’t it nice when an artist demands nothing of you, and only wants to bring you joy?
I am an old man who drives a minivan and will never be cool. I’m such a dad now that I can make bands uncool simply by liking them—so, I apologize to the Struts in advance for getting my dad-ness all over them. I can’t help it. I love them unreservedly. And if you don’t like them, well then fuck you. That’s more whiteboy cocaine daydreams for me, thank you very much. The Struts have cracked open this dead black heart and filled it with Goldschlager. For that, I will forever be grateful.