Angles is the fourth studio album by American rock band The Strokes. It was released on March 18, 2011, through RCA Records. It was the group's first album in over five years, following First Impressions of Earth (2006).
Recording
After touring in support of First Impressions of Earth, the Strokes went on an extended hiatus in 2007 and then regrouped two years later to begin writing new material for a fourth album. The album took more than two years to materialize, with the band recording live demos of 18 songs before heading into Avatar Studios in New York with producer Joe Chiccarelli, but without Casablancas. Not long after recording began, however, the band became frustrated with both Chiccarelli's reserved production style and Casablancas' absence. Only one song from these recording sessions, "Life Is Simple in the Moonlight", remained in its original form on the album's track listing. The rest of the songs were either scrapped or reworked by the band with engineer Gus Oberg at guitarist Albert Hammond, Jr.'s home studio in Port Jervis, Upstate New York.
While Casablancas’ disengagement may have been by design, guitarist Nick Valensi found the whole experience deeply dissatisfying. "I won’t do the next album if we make it like this. No way. It was awful– just awful. Working in a fractured way, not having a singer there. I’d show up certain days and do guitar takes by myself, just me and the engineer." He added that most of Casablancas' ideas and suggestions were written "in really vague terms" and then sent to the band by email, leaving the others without much to go on. In an interview with Pitchfork, Casablancas stated: "When I'm there, people might wait for me to say something. I think it took me being a little mute to force the initiative".
These stories and reports stating the album was written separately by the band from Casablancas however, were untrue. The vocals were indeed recorded separately by Casablancas, but they were written together, in session, with the rest of the band present. Casablancas later said, "The funny thing about Angles is there was all that weird talk about recording it separately. We just had dinner in L.A. and we were all talking about it. And they forget that we sat in a room in a studio and were writing songs forever. That's where we did the whole record. All the parts, the songs, in a room, together. We recorded them with two mics, and that was the foundation, and then we were going to go track the official recording. That's when they went and recorded stuff, and when the 'Julian wasn't there,' BS or whatever [started]. That was just because logistically, we'd never done a record like that".
Hammond's drug abuse and resulting rehab — stemming from his breakup with model Agyness Deyn — was another hurdle the band faced during the album's production, as he missed early recording sessions.
Musical style
Speaking to Zane Lowe, Nikolai Fraiture stated that he felt Angles would be "a return to the basics", suggesting the songs would be of similar style to their acclaimed 2001 debut record, Is This It. He added, "Sonically, I feel it's the album which should have been made between Room on Fire and First Impressions of Earth". However, the band decided to experiment with various production techniques, including MIDI electronic samples. Producer Gus Oberg claimed that despite wanting to use MIDI, neither he nor the band were satisfied with the results, and instead used a number of keyboards, with every member of the band playing the same parts manually instead for at least one song each. These included mainly the Roland Juno-106, as well as the MicroKORG XL, a Wurlitzer electric piano, and a Farfisa organ. The band also utilised a number of guitar pedals, more so than previously, including the Maxon AD999 delay, the Electro‑Harmonix Memory Man, and various Green Rhino distortion pedals. Oberg would record the digital guitar tracks onto tape, using a TEAC quarter‑inch tape machine during tracking sessions, before re-recording them back to digital for mixing, in order to gain a more analogue sound. He also used the machine to achieve a slap‑back echo on the drum track for 'Gratisfaction'. The band also made extensive use of overdubbed guitars, and various vocal techniques, such as backing vocals for the first time, vocal harmonies, and vocal layering techniques, including double tracking, all of which are most notable on "Under Cover of Darkness".