The Strokes - Machu Picchu

Wow, nothing by The Strokes.

I play a lot of FIFA. The new one came out a month or so ago and I play it about five times a week. Sometimes, lately, seven times a week. Sometimes an hour and a half at the most in a sitting, always with music blaring. The game has a soundtrack too, though. This isn’t about that soundtrack. But when I turned it on today, it played “Machu Picchu” by The Strokes.

Machu Picchu is an icon in the Inca world. It means ‘old peak’ and it’s an estate that was built in Peru and is still standing today. It’s mostly special because it’s a beautifully-constructed ‘thing’ that stands in these mountains that creates amazing atmosphere, exposure and well, views. Once I started reading up on it a bit I had to find a way to include the picture I found of it, at the top. It was apparently voted as one of the new Seven Wonders of the World; nothing official on that though.

It’s just the title of the opening song off their latest album, Angles. For starters, Julian Casablancas has emphasized the band doesn’t really weigh too much impact on the words but that the whole band including him are way more focused on the music. Another fact is that the band recorded all of the music for this album without Casablancas before he came on to sing on the album. So it makes sense when thinking about the lyrics and especially the line before the tearing guitars, “I’m just trying to find a mountain I can climb,” that maybe the song is merely about consistently staying busy. Always focusing on steadying a boat of various pressures and stresses, the ultimate climb would be Machu Picchu – if one ever were to arrive.

So the song begins with a ringing twitch before the drums explode with a nervy guitar battle and a resonating bass line. The music twitches along with a chugging atmosphere, as if you’re simply living your life. As the music rises into the turbulent swells where the guitars continue to clash against each other, the drums pound through and the harmonies counter with bite, there is a lot to overcome. Your patience is tested, you’re continuing to worry with social statuses, the voices in your head continue to torment you, etc. It’s a really awesome choice to kickstart the album.

They’re a super popular band so it’s not much of a miss to have not mentioned them before. However, they’re a very important band in my personal musical life (they were my first ever concert, saw them through first and second album tours, I’ve seen them four times total, each album was heard as it came out as I was growing up through high school and beyond and now blah blah blah) so that’s why I was mostly surprised to see no mention yet. I even had to search it lots of times to make sure I wasn’t repeating it.

So this is just one song by them, off their latest album. Here’s to more to come from them maybe. – Bryan