Taken for a Fool

If the rest of *Angles* felt like the band searching, this track sounds like The Strokes remembering exactly who they are — and then running. The tempo is brisk and slightly frantic, guitars riffing in tight, rhythmically locked patterns that recall the coiled energy of *Room on Fire*. There's a nervousness baked into the groove, a sense of someone aware they're being left behind and moving faster to compensate. Casablancas's vocal is dryer here, closer to his early delivery, with the wry detachment that made him compelling — not quite bitterness, not quite indifference, something in between that he alone seems able to inhabit convincingly. The song is about being underestimated, or perhaps about recognizing your own complacency too late, the two things blurring together in the verses. The production has real snap — drums cracking, bass sitting forward, guitars bright and slightly abrasive. It's the kind of song that makes more sense in motion: running for a train, walking out of somewhere you should have left earlier. The bridge accelerates into something almost frantic before snapping back into the verse groove with satisfying precision. In a record that sometimes felt like a band trying on other identities, this one arrives wearing its own clothes.