After a four-year hiatus, the Strokes are back. The New York City quintet, as famous for their slick sound as they are their high-profile hookups, is headlining some of this summer’s most prestigious rock festivals, including the UK’s Isle of Wight and that melting pot of musical genres, Lollapalooza. “I’m excited and scared as ****,” Strokes drummer Fabrizio Moretti tells Rolling Stone magazine of the upcoming shows. “It’s going to be crazy.”
Hot on the heels of the festival dates is a brand new Strokes album, tentatively set to drop in September 2010. Band members have suspended various side projects to work on their fourth record together, a follow-up to 2006s First Impressions of Earth. What’s different this time out is that the as-yet-untitled album is a collaborative effort, with Moretti, bassist Nikolai Fraiture, and dueling guitarists Nick Valensi and Albert Hammond, Jr. all contributing to the writing process instead of letting that responsibility fall solely to frontman Julian Casablancas, as has been the case on all the group’s prior recordings. It was Casablancas’ feeling that his fellow bandmates were merely going through the motions of being a band—showing up for work, collecting a paycheck, and saving their creative juices for other projects—that led to the Strokes’ unofficial hiatus.
The Strokes became the darlings of the indie music scene back in 2001 with the release of their debut album, Is This It. These prep-school boys, with their highly-stylized image, were heralded as rock’s next big thing and have been credited with kick-starting the garage rock revival of the early 2000s. They often draw comparisons to such influential bands as the Velvet Underground and Television, who were part of the New York City underground rock scene in the ‘70s and widely regarded as one of the key founders of new wave music as well as one of the seminal influences on punk rock. Is This It earned the Strokes universal acclaim and an opening slot for The Rolling Stones on their Licks Tour in 2002-03. The album topped many decade’s best lists and has sold over 3.5 million copies worldwide.
Room on Fire was next up for the Strokes. Released in 2003, the album was praised by critics but was less commercially successful that its predecessor, although it did reach gold status and landed the band on the covers of both Spin and Rolling Stone magazines.
In 2006 the Strokes released First Impressions of Earth. The album met with mixed reviews and although it gave the band their first #1 spot on the UK album charts, the record failed to perform to the level of their earlier releases. As the tour in support of First Impressions wound down, the Strokes decided to take a much needed break and retreated from the spotlight, with band members scattering to work on separate projects.
The years apart seem to have matured the Strokes some. Now thirtysomethings, they have wives and babies to fill the time once devoted to beer guzzling and pulling all-nighters for one thing. And as the other four-fifths of the band have taken up the slack and are at last contributing to the songwriting process, the Strokes are forging ahead with open lines of communication and problem solving skills that apparently didn’t exist in their early days of music making, when creative frustrations would boil over and turn personal.
With the bulk of the new album already recorded, the band have had disagreements over which tracks should be included and which scrapped. The original release date of late 2009 has subsequently been scaled back almost a year to accommodate the differences of opinion. This new way of making music for the Strokes, this “supercollaboration,” is sure to yield a slightly different sound than the Casablancas-penned records of the past. The new music is said to be a cross between a ‘70s Thin Lizzy/Elvis Costello sound and some bizarre futuristic music, although Valensi promises it maintains a definite Strokes vibe. Band members have put all side projects on hold as they work around the clock to finish the new album.
Although the record is due to drop this fall, the band can’t say whether or not they will be performing any of the new material on their summer concert dates. As for the future of the reunited Strokes, Valensi, for one, is hoping for an enduring one. “I’m hoping whatever **** went down in these lost four years doesn’t turn out to be missteps,” he commented. “I want to make dozens of albums with the Strokes.”
For further information on the upcoming Strokes album and festival dates, visit the band’s website at www.thestrokes.com.
