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publicListen to how the bass and drums cut out at the climax of the solo, it's incredible
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publicI really like Nick Valensi's #guitar work on this song - the #solo after the chorus is great. I tried transcribing it, and it's actually quite difficult, requires some pretty fast alternate picking.

It's also played in #dorian-mode , sharping the 6th of the minor scale.
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publicThe first time I was trying to solo over a new song with The Walkups, I accidentally regurgitated the first four bars of the solo on this song without meaning to. I've never transcribed this solo, and at the time I wasn't even particularly fond of this song. I was sure I had copied my solo from somewhere but wasn't sure where. This song came on shuffle a couple days later while I was biking to work and I suddenly realized I had unconsciously ripped off an entire measure of the solo.

Anyways, I like this solo a lot.

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publicBy convention, I'm used to guitar solos happening after the second chorus, where a bridge would usually be in a song. But it seems like a lot of indie rock songs tend to place them right after the first chorus. This song does that,
I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor and
The Modern Age do as well.

Come to think of it, I can't think of a single Strokes song where the solo happens during the bridge.

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publicThere's this accompanying riff that he plays during the chorus that's fantastic where he arpeggiates the triads to chords of the chorus. It sounds so angular and distinct.

He definitely has a very distinctive soloing style, especially for a indie rock guitarist. He really likes playing intervals, triads and changes - it's a lot more sophisticated than your basic pentatonic indie rock soloing (which is mostly what I do). Contrast this to the solos in Arctic Monkeys songs (which I still really like!), which are almost all pentatonic, with basic bends - think
I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor. Even fancier indie rock solos like the one in
Slow Dance II (or
Even Flow, if we want to expand to grunge) are mostly pentatonic, and draw mostly from the Hendrix/SRV style of playing. What Nick Valensi plays here sounds completely different, and that's cool.




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publicThe guitar shreds way more than usual for an indie rock song. Around 4:30 it goes into this fast triplet section that sounds a lot like
Free Bird

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The solo on this song is entirely carried by the rhythm section - the guitar part itself is actually quite simple. Listen to how the everything cuts out in the middle of the solo to emphasize the climax.

It's also quite melodic! There's very little shredding.