Latest Release
- 15 MAR 2024
- 1 Song
- The New Abnormal · 2020
- Room On Fire · 2003
- The New Abnormal · 2020
- Is This It · 2001
- Is This It · 2001
- Room On Fire · 2003
- The New Abnormal · 2020
- The New Abnormal · 2020
- Comedown Machine · 2013
- The New Abnormal · 2020
Essential Albums
- How do you follow up a debut like Is This It? In the case of The Strokes, by not losing your cool. Released two years later, Room On Fire doesn’t overhaul the strong points of that 2001 milestone. Rather, it reunites the New York five-piece with producer Gordon Raphael for what initially feels like more of the same—in the best possible way. Take the single “Reptilia”, which rides its straight-arrow bassline right into the familiar signature of Nick Valensi and Albert Hammond Jr’s taut guitar exchanges. It could have easily slotted into the earlier record, if not for a borderline-hoarse vocal turn from Julian Casablancas after so many months of relentless touring. Likewise, “What Ever Happened?” seems to reflect on the exhaustion of overnight fame with the album’s opening couplet: “I wanna be forgotten/And I don’t wanna be reminded.” Room On Fire came together after abandoned sessions with close Radiohead collaborator Nigel Godrich, and returning producer Raphael once again opts for vintage warmth over modern polish. But though many of these songs preserve the early material’s clipped endings and stubborn forward drive, there are playful new tricks spread throughout the runtime. Valensi flashes bright, synth-like guitar tones on “The End Has No End” and especially “12:51”, while “The Way It Is” applies a similar tactic to Fabrizio Moretti’s drum work, rendering it with mechanical stiffness. Casablancas adopts softer, more romantic vocals against reggae-esque licks on “Automatic Stop”, before evoking a slow-dance number on prom night with the ballad “Under Control”. And more than just a druggy time capsule of early-2000s excess, “Meet Me in the Bathroom” went on to inspire both a book and documentary film of the same name. Despite the singer’s reluctance to accept his new-found notoriety at the album’s start, Casablancas caps off the record with a more accepting, even optimistic air. As the parting line for the perky closer “I Can’t Win”, he half-promises, “I’ll be right back.” The band would indeed return a few years later with 2006’s First Impressions of Earth, contributing to a career-long pattern of subtly deconstructing their sound while still presenting very much as The Strokes. Room On Fire might forever be approached as a companion piece to its older sibling, but those evolutionary shifts are already in motion here.
- So much lore attends The Strokes’ 2001 debut album that it’s easy to forget just what a straightforward, no-frills rock record it is. Forged in the furnace of messy Lower East Side nights, Is This It bottles the scruffy uncertainty of twenty-something city life at the dawn of the millennium. That’s right there in the lyrics of the opening title track (“I just lied to get to your apartment”), whose groggy unspooling defies the accelerated pace dominating most of the record. Yet once the band launches into the lockstep stab and churn of “The Modern Age”, it’s not hard to understand the album’s watershed status. Released at a time when guitar bands—and especially rock stars—appeared destined for a steep decline, these 11 songs offered a ready mouthpiece in Julian Casablancas, complete with distorted vocals and blearily recounted lyrics. Similarly streetwise and black-leather-jacketed, his bandmates echoed his sense of timeless New York cool, from fashion sense to musical references (The Velvet Underground, Television, Ramones). No wonder the band began to dominate photo spreads in the British press before they had even signed to a label, fuelling old-school hype on both sides of the Atlantic. Clocking that outsized buzz with a smirking album title, The Strokes managed to fulfill sky-high expectations with songs that hit like instant classics while wearing their precursors on their well-worn sleeves. “Last Nite” unabashedly swipes the opening guitar salvo from Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers’ “American Girl”, while so many other fleeting touches function like Easter-egg homages to previous decades of rock. But this material is every bit as strong as what it’s referencing: observe the grime-caked jangle and nagging heartache of “Someday”, or how guitarists Nick Valensi and Albert Hammond Jr gamely play off each other against the anxious pulse of “Hard to Explain”. Even if they present as dishevelled, the band members are tight and intricate at every turn, especially when Valensi and Hammond link up for spidery dual leads. For a band so strongly identified with a particular time and place, The Strokes have enjoyed surprising longevity and universality in the decades since their debut. Though content to just be a great rock band rather than the appointed saviours of the genre, they nonetheless inspired the likes of Arctic Monkeys and The Libertines in the UK, and The Killers and Kings of Leon at home. And it all started here.
Albums
- 2020
- 2020
- 2020
- 2013
- 2011
Artist Playlists
- Garage rock snarl. Treble-heavy New Wave guitars. The apex of cool.
- Smart, winking visual homages to retro pop culture.
- It took more than a village to raise these New York garage rockers.
Compilations
More To Hear
- Talking The Voidz and The Strokes.
- Changing alt-rock forever—in just 35 minutes.
- Celebrating 20 years of The Strokes' iconic album.
- Celebrating the pop innovator and a look at the NYC 00's scene.
- Showcasing rarities, influences, and stone cold classics.
- The Eagles of Death Metal frontman plays his favorites.
- The London singer is Added, plus The Strokes Essentials.
About The Strokes
The Strokes became the toast of New York in the early ’00s by putting a modern spin on other Big Apple musical eras—specifically the late-’60s counterculture that spawned the Velvet Underground, and the fertile ’70s scene when leather-clad punk bands roared through CBGB. Early singles “Last Nite” and “Someday” paired vocalist Julian Casablancas’ distorted croon with pogo-ready backdrops—wiry basslines, propulsive drums and a gritty twin-guitar attack—and devil-may-care lyrics about youthful ennui. The Strokes came by their musical approach honestly: four members of the band started playing together before leaving school; guitarist Albert Hammond Jr. joined the group in the late ’90s after moving to New York for film school. The quintet quickly found their groove, with both their 2001 debut, Is This It, and the 2003 follow-up, Room On Fire, favouring concise, straightforward rock songs with plenty of buoyancy and bite. Smartly, The Strokes continued to build on this bare-bones sonic template on subsequent albums, adding buzzy synthesisers and post-punk guitar heft, and penning lyrics that grapple with the comedown from a night-owl lifestyle. All the while, the band never lost their aura of effortless New York sophistication, infusing records such as 2020’s The New Abnormal with old-school attitude and a fresh, modern sound.
- ORIGIN
- New York, NY, United States
- FORMED
- 1998
- GENRE
- Alternative