(Credits: Far Out / Roger Woolman)
The Strokes exist in this weird hinterland where we’re simultaneously lucky that they ever get their shit together enough to release music, and yet, with everything they do, there’s a sense of missed opportunity. They were meant to be the band that brought real rock ‘n’ roll back to the mainstream and sweep nu-metal into the septic tank of history, the way Nirvana had done to glam metal a decade previously. That, of course, didn’t happen.
To be clear, it’s unfair to burden anyone with expectations like that. Nirvana and the grunge wave they were the crest of, will probably never happen again. It will definitely never happen when suits try to manufacture it. As much as The Strokes were a good to great rock ‘n’ roll group, their rise was absolutely the product of a group of suits trying to manufacture what had come before.
However, that’s not to say the band weren’t also the architects of their own downfall. Nowhere is this more apparent than the six-year wait for a new album after their third effort, 2006’s First Impressions of Earth. At the time, the smart bet seemed to be that once they’d finished touring the record, they would split up because every single word coming out of The Strokes’ camp seemed to point to life in the band being a profound form of mental and physical torture for every member.
This was exacerbated in 2011 when the band started promoting their fourth album, Angles. For this, the band seemed to have a… shall we say, unique approach to interviews. Rather than talk up the music, they seemed to spend entire interviews talking about how much they despised each other and how making the record was about as much fun as sepsis.
Why was Angles such a pain to make?
For one thing, Julian Casablancas had spent the last couple of albums trying to take full control of the band. It seems they had only come back together on the condition that their creative direction take a more democratic turn. Casablancas, ever the truculent, overgrown teenager, decided to give the band exactly what they asked for, and not turn up for any actual sessions.
While the rest of the band decamped to upstate New York to work on the record, Casablancas stayed in the city, recording his vocals remotely at Electric Lady Studios. Guitarist Nick Valensi was merciless about this in the press, telling Pitchfork, “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.”
Casablancas wasn’t the only AWOL Stroke, though. Guitarist Albert Hammond Jr was also absent from the early sessions for the record, but for a slightly more sympathetic reason than their singer. Due to his mounting drug addictions, he’d recently split from his girlfriend, model Agyness Deyn, and had checked into rehab in 2009. Upon leaving, he was immediately thrown into this fractured mess of a band set-up. One can only imagine how hard that was to get through, fighting to be sober on the side.
However, get through, the band did. While the 2010s weren’t exactly kind to the group, being witness to all of two albums that absolutely no one would call vintage Strokes, perhaps it was worth it for their standing today. Their sixth album, 2020’s The New Abnormal, has been a surprise hit not only among the ageing hipsters recalling Is This It, but also for a whole new audience of teenagers and young adults.
The band are thriving in their middle age and arguably bigger and more respected now than they’ve ever been. Few bands have had to wade through more bullshit, but from the vantage point The Strokes are at now, they might just look back and think it was all worth it, which is something of a miracle.
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