From the debut Is This It to The New Abnormal, The Strokes have released six albums in twenty-five years, including three indestructible masterpieces. A look back at an incomparable arc.
Is This It (2001)
Sleek, punchy, and sly songs propelled by a streetwise, aristocratic voice wielding a set of universal keys—from brazen smirks to juvenile swoons—that can unlock even the most hermetic skepticism.
From the admirable second track, The Modern Age, Julian Casablancas impeccably rejuvenates two of Lou Reed’s favorite registers—nasal nonchalance and furious croon—then clothes the chorus in luxurious romance.
For, as their cleverly equivocal name suggests, the Strokes oscillate between sonic impact and gentle caress. When a stroke can mean “blow” (of a ball, of a bowl, or of genius), the band’s mission is to uncover in the streets of Times Square the seedy fragrances of old New York asphalt.
So we should salute the resurrection of the fabulous Johnny Thunders, whose sexy shrieks and roguish slips resurface as soon as the Strokes opt for the rock’n’roll fury (Take It or Leave It).
Yet the Strokes are too cultured to settle for a mere punkorgy, as deliriously enjoyable as that might be. Just as much as the Heartbreakers’ orgiastic frenzy, they relish the angular poetry of Television and know how to pluck dark stars under the glow of Marquee Moon.
And, above all, they remember to cross the Hudson to visit their precious Hoboken cousins. For it is the hypnotic jitter of the Feelies that most spectacularly threads through Julian Casablancas’s taut songs. B. J.
Room on Fire (2003)
The Strokes are formidable. At the very least, their strategy is formidable, brimming with intelligence. After a debut universally hailed as a gem carved from the pure nostalgia of CBGB’s 1976–77—bright enough to be loved without reservation—they now push punk imitation to near perfection. All their models did it: a debut that lacerates the legs, a sophomore that infuriates. Hat tip, very well imitated.
Thus, like (in no particular order) Blondie, The Damned, The Clash, Patti Smith, Television, Devo, Ramones, The Cars or The Jam, Casablancas and his mates gently trip over their own feet in the second act. As everyone waited for them at the crossroads, eyes already set on the prize, it was better not to disappoint by releasing a merely “good” second album. That would have been so vulgar, so not cool.
The Strokes are the last working Warholian object; they operate on the energy of references, the mechanical reproduction of codes and signs. They run largely on bravado, which never rules out a backlash. Room on Fire is thus a charming misstep, almost a success, as the tracks line up like bowling pins and resemble those that thrilled on Is This It. C. C.
First Impressions of Earth (2006)
Replacing the faithful Gordon Raphael (present on only three tracks) with producer David Kahne, The Strokes laid down on First Impressions of Earth several small atomic bombs. Here one finds the group’s original genius, capable of crafting, with little material, pop gems like You Only Live Once or Razorblade, against which resisting is vain. Singles that will delight both longtime fans of Television’s Marquee Moon and the financiers of record labels.
On First Impressions of Earth, you hear more guitars than at any Gibson convention. In this sense, Julian Casablancas and his pals produced the perfect album, the record Muse’s interns never managed to compose, and perhaps only Queens of the Stone Age could someday write if they aimed to court the girlfriends of their fans.
Everyone will be right: the Strokes’ new record sounds like the sum of its two predecessors, with three times as many speakers in the living room. Nick Valensi, who even ended up lending his name to the Epiphone guitar line, toys with his instrument for nearly an hour while the Hammond monster rumbles like a beast. J. S.
Angles (2011)
It doesn’t quite smell like Christmas trees for the Strokes yet. One of the rock legends of the past decade, the band that signaled a revival, is still alive. It even releases its fourth album, Angles, after nearly five years since First Impressions of Earth and after the group’s breakup into various solo projects. No, it doesn’t smell of doom. Yet it smells of soap, the soap you rub on boards perilously tilted toward nothingness.
For if the group still breathes, it seems inexorably sliding toward its end: news in the past months hasn’t been good. In the classic release-promo-interview cycle, Americans have been chased for weeks. Almost impossible to gather them in one room—for a single photo session that satisfies no ego, for individual meetings the “boys” won’t bother showing up to. Their leader Julian Casablancas even acts sulky, offering contradictory statements to the press.
Not great. The miracle is probably that the band didn’t implode then. That they managed to finish their nightmare and that the nightmare, Angles, isn’t the outright catastrophe announced. When they attempt a re-reading of The Strokes’ own heritage, the album struggles to convince—Under Cover of Darkness, the first track heard, was particularly disappointing in this regard.
Yet a handful of far more daring songs (the superb Machu Picchu, Metabolism, Call Me Back, or You’re So Right) remind us that The Strokes are not adored for nothing: in better conditions, the Americans would still have much to accomplish. T. B.
Comedown Machine (2013)
One would do well to remember: each new Strokes album, at release, has disappointed. Even the otherwise brilliant Room on Fire. Even Is This It, to be honest, which at the time seemed a notch below the band’s first EP, the ever-brilliant The Modern Age.
Truth is, the problem is that “The” bands have conditioned us to tolerate that reassuring stagnation, that illusion of forward motion—for instance, The Libertines—so when one of them dares to move, and not backward, it can be hard to keep up.
We should have remembered this before snickering along with everyone else at the opening track of Comedown Machine, the deceiving One Way Trigger, which recalled A-ha with its synths under poppers and a voice that sounds like a cat stuck in a door. Optics or sonic illusion. One Way Trigger is, in fact, a cool and bold song that tries what the best electronic music has always dared: to make dance with cockroaches in the pockets. That sad charm, that jaded air, Julian Casablancas embodies with his worn look and, now, over the length of an album.
Because beneath its carefree guise, Comedown Machine is one of the most staggeringly unhappy records heard since Daft Punk or Pet Shop Boys—think of the funky, defeated Tap Out or the glorious disco of Welcome to Japan.
But Comedown Machine, with its plaintive, anxious singing and party-simulating synths, is not a farewell to guitars, especially the very beautiful, cutting ones on the high-soaring pop songs All the Time or Partners in Crime. It is a farewell to a certain carefree mood, to the endless party: the heart-wrenching album from a band dragged into years of late-night payoffs for their hangovers. J.-D. B.
The New Abnormal (2020)
The New Abnormal is, on paper, faithful to the group’s metronomic logic: around ten tracks, a tracklist unfurled like a screenplay, and a graphic cover, namely a painting by their compatriot Jean-Michel Basquiat, Bird on Money, created in 1981. On launch, The Strokes release two paradoxical tracks: At the Door (a five-minute faux single, hypnotic like a confining day stuck behind a door) and Bad Decisions, a millimeter-perfect hit dropped on a memorable Olympia night on February 18, 2020.
What followed was the Covid-19 pandemic, which grants the title The New Abnormal a new interpretation. Everything feels newly strange, until the six‑album release finally arrived—less a grand event than a digital drop hardly promoted by those involved.
Unlike Phoenix, their Parisian cousins whose chemistry remains as enigmatic as it is stimulating, the Strokes need to scatter in order to regroup, increasingly spaced apart. After waiting seven long years for a successor to Comedown Machine, nobody, not even the five principals, could have predicted a proper discursive continuation to The New Abnormal.
That, too, is what made this sixth album so beautiful and precious, its release date forever echoing the historical sequence we all lived through. In that sense, The New Abnormal became the soundtrack to our locked-down era and, incidentally, one of the records of 2020. F. V.
