Some artists inspire legions of hard-core fans who travel the world over in pursuit of their idols. Some of these love affairs become multi-generational, with parents bringing their kids to see the bands they've adore since their teenage years. However, no matter how big an act is, there will always be someone who despises them just as much as the super fan loves them. Be it Bruce Springsteen or The Beatles, Stevie Wonder or Oasis, AC/DC or Radiohead, music is at once universal and universally divisive.

In Mixed Emotions, the writers of GoldenPlec discuss the marmite music that splits our opinions, leading to heated debates at 3am on a Monday night.

Love It

What seem like simply constructed rocks songs are exercises in how to precisely deliver sharp as knives melodies. Just listen to Last Nite‘s intro where each instruments’ entrance timing is no accident. Each one joins the fray at exactly the optimum moment to produce that killer intro, before Julian Casablancas shimmies in to deliver lyrics so laid back that he could have telephoned them in horizontally.

The production feels like The Strokes just ambled in off the street, amped up and hit record, and the truth isn’t far from that. The Strokes preferred to record a song just once for rawness and were looking for that retro sound that had time-travelled to the future. It was a sound that they nailed with producer Gordon Raphael.

Obviously, for an album to garner the acclaim it has it needed to have more than one stand-out song, and ‘Is This It’ has them in spades.

Someday, Barely Legal, Hard To Explain and New York City Cops and are not just great songs, they are a spree of feelgood hits to the brain. The hallmark of great albums, particularly those that stand the test of time, are the ones where you can say unequivocally that there are no duff songs – and ‘Is This It’ sits comfortably in that bracket. Take It Or Leave It, Soma and Alone, Together would be for many bands singles, but on ‘Is This It’ they serve as quality album tracks. It all amounts to a curriculum in effortless cool.

It’s not understating that this is a zeitgeist album which at the time of its release generated the type of fervour among the indie crowd only associated with teenage girls and boy-bands. Such was its impact, how could they possibly follow up and it could be argued that they never have. This album has zero fat and it couldn’t have been leaner if it had been cooked in a George Foreman grill.

This album has zero fat and it couldn’t have been leaner if it had been cooked in a George Foreman grill.

Hate It

'Is This It' is widely regarded as one of the finest indie albums of not just the last decade, but of all time.

Certainly the album sparked a whole new wave of excellent indie bands in both the UK and US, and this momentum lasted for most of the decade. But of all the albums and bands to kick-start the post-punk revival, how did something as dull, listless and unimaginative as 'Is This It' make the grade?

Take, for example, the second track on the album The Modern Age. The rhythm guitar strums at a steady pace throughout, and the bass and drums keep up with this speed set by said guitar. There’s not much of a riff on lead guitar, so for pretty much the whole song there are four rhythm instruments.

Then Casablancas’ voice comes in as a low monotonous drone. A mild distortion effect is placed on his vocals, and this does nothing but melt Casablancas’ dry tones into the bland, dishwater mix. The solo’s feeble attempts to jolt some sort of energy into this lifeless heap of a tune are suffocated by the overpowering mass of the rhythm section. All of the tracks on the album fit this loose structure with an overblown rhythm section and boring, uninspired riffs on lead.

There are a couple of exceptions to this general rule, Someday is a delightful slice of indie-pop melancholy reminiscence and is a refreshing break from the drudgery of the rest of the album. Last Nite, while as painfully over-rated as the album itself, still stands out from the mediocre trash that comprises 'Is This It'

There is an abundance of potential on 'Is This It', and all you have to do is listen to some of the band’s later singles to acknowledge that The Strokes are indeed a highly accomplished band. But the lo-fi recording on 'Is This It' makes a horribly muddled mess of what are already unexciting tunes, so the fact that this album achieved any level of success is absolutely bizarre.

How did something as dull, listless and unimaginative as 'Is This It' make the grade?