The Strokes - The New Abnormal review: Bold comeback is their best in years

Back on form: The Stokes return with their best album in
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David Smyth9 April 2020

They couldn’t be more New York if they arrived inside a giant hot dog bun, but The Strokes became big in the UK first and have subsequently seemed cursed to be an American version of late-period Oasis: together grudgingly, forever failing to match a lightning early spell when they were untouchable.

The quintet’s debut album, Is This It, was so popular, and so brilliant, that in 2002 they headlined Reading Festival on the back of its half hour of wiry, insouciant rock and roll.

Since then, diminishing returns. They didn’t even bother touring or promoting their last LP in 2013. When asked recently why they have worked with legendary producer Rick Rubin on this sixth album, singer Julian Casablancas replied: “I guess he thought: these guys have fallen far enough.”

Time for a proper comeback, then. It is common for every release by a long-running, once idolised band to be hailed at first as a return to form (see also REM, and yes, Oasis) but The New Abnormal is really something.

The best albums of 2020 so far

1/11

The band sound distinctively themselves but also stretch their sound on songs that are five minutes or longer as standard. Bad Decisions brazenly steals the tune from Billy Idol’s Dancing With Myself and sounds ecstatic about it.

Eternal Summer is simultaneously the longest song and far too short, a nonchalant groove on which Casablancas shifts his voice up to a warm falsetto. It’s up there with their best work while sounding boldly different from it. Throughout, there’s a sense that the band are trying again. It’s about time.

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