The Strokes Tickets

Each time they return, the New York kingpins intensify (and satisfy) our desire for save-the-world rock and roll that’s sexy and sharp, primitive but progressive. 

“In the flesh, it’s even sexier,” boasted the retro car advert with which The Strokes teased their seventh album before mailing cassettes out to a hundred-odd surprised fans. The Rick Rubin-produced Reality Awaits – their first for six years – was announced with the playful swagger they’ve long carried themselves with, ever since they debuted as The Strokes at The Spiral Lounge in September 1999.

At the centre of this fledgling garage-rock operation were two classmates turned acquaintances turned collaborators, Julian Casablancas and Albert Hammond Jr., whose paths first crossed 4,000 miles from their NYC homes: at an elite Swiss boarding school. It’s not the most auspicious of rock and roll origin stories. But throw in absent parents, turn-of-the-century semi-nihilistic malaise, and the inspiring buzz of the world’s cultural capital they returned home to, and you’ve got the recipe for one of history’s great, peerless rock institutions. Bratty but brilliant, aloof but immediate, attention seeking but with the goods worthy of everyone’s attention, The Strokes joined a lineage of Big Apple avant-pop balancing acts from Lou Reed to Patti Smith to Tom Verlaine, while also looking to West Coast counterculture heroes such as The Doors and the sounds of Reggae and grunge. 

Their lineup rounded out with Casablancas’ classmates from New York’s Dwight School – guitarist Nick Valensi, drummer Fabrizio Moretti, plus one of his childhood besties, bassist Nikolai Fraiture – The Strokes went on to near-enough change rock music forever with their debut album, Is This It. Not only was it provocative – the album cover had to be changed for certain markets – it also inspired a thousand bands that followed in their wake. James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem said it was his record of the decade. The Killers scrapped the majority of Hot Fuss when they first heard it, starting from scratch. It engendered The Libertines, Arctic Monkeys, Franz Ferdinand, a new skinny jeans trend, sunglasses indoors! It made indie rock cool again. As NME opined at the time of release: “They look and sound like a band who are going to save rock.” 

From there, The Strokes delivered two fairly critically acclaimed but definitely fan-pleasing albums in the form of 2003’s Room on Fire (which pioneered their signature synth-guitar tone with ‘12:51’ while ‘Reptilia’ taught every boy in the Western world to play guitar) and First Impressions of Earth in 2005. During the extended hiatus that followed, Casablancas started an indie label, Cult Records, keeping up with his Meet Me in the Bathroom-era NYC buddies by releasing the debut solo album by Karen O among others. Hammond Jr. put out two solo records. Moretti joined the supergroup Little Joy.

When they eventually regrouped for the 2011 record Angles, the band waved off media-driven narratives of infighting and continued to release brilliant albums while scorching the festival circuit. They won a Grammy for The New Abnormal, and seemingly reasserted their willingness to spend time together via their 5guys talking about things they know nothing about podcast. 

Above all – corny as it sounds – they continue to make dreams come true. As we’ve seen with Geese fever over the last couple of years, audiences are craving weird, lean, sexy, back-to-the-garage rock that doesn’t compromise or fit a mould. The Strokes not only continue to deliver that in droves, they continue to open the door for others, too. “My dream, goal, hope is that things that are more important and powerful and meaningful become more popular in their own time than later,” Casablancas said a few years back. He got his wish and then some.