Lizzy Goodman’s 2016 oral history of the early-noughties New York indie rock scene, Meet Me in the Bathroom, took its name from a Strokes song, and not for nothing – they are essentially the book’s central characters. It’s an 800-page doorstopper that does for 2000s NYC what Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast did for 1920s Paris, covering everything from personal drama to broader sociopolitical issues. And yet throughout the book, all roads seem to lead back to The Strokes: how effortlessly talented they seemed; how transformative their debut album, , was; and just how they were.
There’s also a lingering sense of regret: a nagging feeling of potential unfulfilled, the band having made two sensational records that redefined indie rock only for some of the usual pitfalls – addiction and interpersonal issues – to rear their heads and sabotage the potential for more classics.
In that respect, The Strokes became one of the most enigmatic bands of their generation, never quite splitting up but often not feeling like a going concern either, reconvening every so often for festival appearances and then disappearing back into their solo work. They often wore the look of a group going through the motions, both onstage – their last appearance in London was a 2023 show at All Points East plagued by sound issues -and on record, with albums like 2011’s and 2013’s marked by only flashes of brilliance, the discord and disconnect palpable.
More recently, though, more than two decades on from indie’s heyday, it feels like they’ve turned a corner – evidenced by the fact that they are finally returning to a conventional live schedule. Somewhat unbelievably, last night was the opening night of their first full UK tour for 20 years. London is a fitting place for it; this is the city that first embraced them, as it has so many American bands, from Blondie to The Killers, who had to cross the pond before anybody back home sat up and took notice.
That they’ve sold out two nights at the O2, as well as the multigenerational composition of the crowd, suggests that the appeal of and its follow-up, Room on Fire, continues to endure. Perhaps the more relevant pair of records, though, is their last two, 2021’s assured return-to-form and their latest album, , an adventurous, musically ambitious set of songs that has the band sounding as loose and uninhibited as they have in over two decades. The question was whether they’d be able to carry that energy with them to the arena stage.
When singer Julian Casablancas cheekily asked if anybody had any requests, maybe half an hour in, it was clear they had succeeded. There was an off-the-cuff swagger to what genuinely felt like a new version of The Strokes. That was, in part, because the lineup has changed; the towering, rakish frame of guitarist Nick Valensi was conspicuous by its absence (though such a separation from the band appears considerably more amicable than what anyone could have imagined in years gone by). That change aside, though, the band seemed renewed, reinvigorated, grinning at each other as they made the weird, off-kilter pop of new tracks like “Dine ‘n’ Dash” and “Lonely in the Future” sound as though they had been written for arenas.
At the centre of this was Casablancas, who so often since the mid-noughties has seemed like a reluctant frontman, as if his own band bored him. Not tonight, though: since he succeeded in working some of the weirder tendencies of his other project, The Voidz, into his Strokes work, it’s like a weight has been lifted. He’s never sounded this good, his vocals looping and playful on the new tracks, and absolutely thunderous on the old ones.
Predictably, it was the latter that really ignited the crowd last night, the setlist a reminder that The Strokes wrote half the indie sleaze songbook by themselves, their repertoire taking in both aggressive, soaring garage rock – “Reptilia”, “Juicebox” – and aching melancholy, the set highlight being a dreamy take on their very best song, 2001’s “Someday”.
As if to underline how much fun they were having, the encore featured both an obscure cover of “This Is Not” by Blonde Redhead and a fabulously ramshackle “Last Nite”, perhaps the signature song of the indie sleaze era. This was a different Strokes, though, who have figured out that there is room for both nostalgia and new ground. The one constant? They’re still so cool.
The Strokes tour Europe and the UK to the end of October. Tickets here