Every week, I will fire up the Shuffle Songs option on my iPod; the first song to come up, no matter what it is, will get an instant, unvarnished review. We're at the mercy of random chance and the limits of my digital music collection. Let's see where this takes us.

Take It or Leave It
The Strokes, Is This It?

Looking back, it's pretty weird how quickly the Strokes bubble inflated and then burst. I think they doomed the second all of the "saviors of rock and roll" hype started. That helped them sell records, but it built up expectations that they couldn't possibly live up to. They're a pretty good band, but pretty good in the sense that if they were a local band playing in St. Paul, I'd gladly pay $5 to see them. They're certainly not the sort of band we'll be talking about in ten years, at least unless they manage to kick out an unexpectedly transcendent album in the next few years.

A friend of mine pointed out that Is This It? is in the weird position of being an album whose title exactly describes the way one feels after hearing it the first time. Maybe that's the point, I don't know. What I do know is that "Take It or Leave It" stands slightly above the middle of Is This It?'s songs in terms of goodness, making it a modestly-above-average song on a modestly-above-average album. That's impressively self-referential, sort of like the self-reference in the album's title. Weird. It could be that the Strokes are operating in some spacetime vortex.

"Take It" is a perfect exemplar of the Strokes' perfectly adequate rock: nice separation on the two guitar parts, with both contributing while avoiding muddiness; good, unassuming work from the rhythm section to make everything feel driven (playing all eighth notes on the bass isn't going to get you any phone calls from Primus, but it's often exactly what a song requires); and frivolous but fun vocals. It's nothing special, but it's really not bad at all.

Weekly Shuffle Scoreboard (Best to Worst):
1. "Rock N Roll Radio V2," Derailleur
2. "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart (live)," Wilco
3. "John, I'm Only Dancing," David Bowie
4. "Take It or Leave it," The Strokes
5. "Masoko Tanga," The Police
6. "Climbing up the Walls," Radiohead
7. "That's When I Reach for My Revolver," Mission of Burma