For some reason or other, one of the many details that seems to be forgotten about The Strokes and how they came to “be” is that, in many respects, their high school existence in New York was tantamount to an endless episode of Gossip Girl. Like Stefani Germanotta’s own origin story, theirs was one characterized by Upper Manhattan affluence and the prep schools that came with it. It was while Strokes frontman Julian Casablancas was attending the Dwight School that he met the majority of his band members: guitarist Nick Valensi and drummer Fabrizio Moretti. Bassist Nikolai Fraiture was “picked up” by Casablancas during his tenure at the Lycée Français de New York. And, to add further Nate Archibald meets Chuck Bass cachet to the entire narrative, it was at a Swiss boarding school (where Casablancas was sent to improve his academic performance) that the final “piece” in their lineup, Albert Hammond Jr., was “procured.” Or rather, the seed was planted in his mind. For even though he finished school in Los Angeles, Hammond Jr. answered the call to New York upon being accepted to the Tisch School of the Arts, one of the foremost institutions in turning out douchebags into the entertainment industry after USC and UCLA.
One only brings up this Gossip Girl-inspired backstory because it speaks to one of New York’s “Golden Ages”–in fact, the last one it had: the early and mid-00s. A tipping point moment right in between post-9/11 jadedness and the rezoning of Williamsburg that would turn it rapidly into Condoburg. With the neighborhood being a sort of extension of the Lower East Side, where The Strokes “came up” (just like fellow affluents Lady Gaga and Lana Del Rey), it bears noting that The Strokes capitalized on the dawn of the hipster before this label was lampooned and commodified to an ad infinitum degree, thanks to the daily need of the internet to fill a void with “think pieces” featuring a so-called meta tone about gentrification–the self-awareness therefore making it okay for the white people writing the articles to live in said decimated neighborhoods.
Like walking poster children for what Urban Outfitters would corporatize in the coming years (culminating in actually setting up shop in Williamsburg), the quintet took the Lower Manhattan/North Brooklyn realm by storm. First with live performances, then with the release of their icon-making debut in 2001, Is This It. The disaffected ennui of such a title would immediately indoctrinate listeners to their languid style, replete with the garage rock effect repurposed for a new century. At the time, like Billie Eilish in the present having limited knowledge of seemingly any influence before her, The Strokes said they had never listened to the CBGB band they were oft compared to: Television (at least Interpol had clearly listened to Joy Division). That’s the thing about “it” people in New York–they seem to just fall into things without much regard for the past that shaped them.
Yet, ironically, it would be The Strokes who would influence so many bands after them, including, perhaps most noticeably, Arctic Monkeys, whose own Alex Turner would sing on their 2018 vision of a record, Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino, “I just wanted to be one of The Strokes.” That was certainly the dream for most aspiring musicians from about 2001-2005, with the trifecta of Is This It, Room on Fire and First Impressions of Earth combining to assert The Strokes’ dominance in their genre to be in the same league as The Velvet Underground and The Ramones in their respective heydays. Still, it was always that first record that The Strokes were trying to re-create, to get back to with each new one.
Maybe that’s why, in the time between Is This It and The New Abnormal, the band has only released four records, each met with lesser and lesser success (with Angles and Comedown Machine being the least critically acclaimed), though always a devout enthusiasm from their fanbase. In short, this is how those who still bow down to and revere New York City itself can be described. For its staunch admirers can only see it as they did in its glory days, which, by the transitive property, actually amounts to their own glory days there. When they were still, as some might say, young, dumb and full of cum. Therefore, they constantly cling to this “idea” of the city that is no longer real. And has certainly been proven to be a former husk of itself indeed thanks to its felling by coronavirus.
In any case, The New Abnormal is being called a “return to form,” if you will, after years of The Strokes searching to get back to the cohesion of their earlier sound. Fittingly, the album was recorded in Los Angeles, the place where everyone goes not only to manufacture the “feeling” and “look” of New York, but also to get a sense of perspective on it. Maybe that’s part of the reason the band felt obliged to use a Jean-Michel Basquiat painting as the album’s cover (specifically, “Bird On Money”)–recognizing like most still do that the 1980s remain the zenith of life in New York, as well as the fuel for romanticization that keep people coming back to it. Feeding on the past as a means to justify the present–or rather, delude oneself just enough about it.
With the opening, “The Adults Are Talking,” it’s evident from the get-go that The Strokes are trying to emulate the vibe of such staples as “Hard to Explain” and “Take It Or Leave It”–the latter title being the unofficial New York City mantra. Presumably about a man in a position of power, “The Adults Are Talking” is a means for Casablancas to replicate the rationalization of bad behavior on a “big boy’s” part (e.g. “And then you did something wrong and you said it was great”). The politicians and corporate fat cats who make the sort of decisions that have, in point of fact, rendered New York an unrecognizable moated island for the affluent. The sort of people who would pay The Strokes to play at a private party in their Jennifer Aniston in The Morning Show-styled apartment. “So let’s go back to the old tempo”–a suggestion made at the end of the song that seems to implicate yet another inherent reliance on nostalgia to keep people interested–segues easily into “Selfless.”
Dreamy and serene, this is the track that serves as the biggest giveaway that the record was made in California, where tranquility reigns supreme in a way it never can in NYC. Just as true love rarely does. Which is why, so often, people seem to lay claim to New York as their one true “love” (a trend unfortunately spurred by one, Carrie Bradshaw, in a moment of particular desperation). Indeed, Casablancas crooning, “Please don’t be long, ’cause I want your arm/I don’t have fun without your love/Life is too short, but I will live for you/You’re mucking off, but I will live for you,” could double as a tribute to the city. Too often, unfortunately, Casablancas comes off sounding more like Adam Sandler singing an ode to someone. And, once again, the band relies too heavily on its signature riffs as opposed to rich, wide-ranging lyrics to show signs of artistic progression.
What follows is the third single, “Brooklyn Bridge to Chorus”–essentially a ripoff of Julian Casablancas’ own single, “11th Dimension,” from 2009’s Phrazes for the Young. Once more showcasing his love and nostalgia for the 80s (again, when New York was at its best), Casablancas also combines the topic of his struggle with alcoholism in the early 00s (eventually laying off the sauce entirely since circa ‘09) by singing, “And the 80s song, yeah, how did it go?/When they said, ‘This is the beginning of the best years/Even though, false, break/One shot is never enough/I just wait for this to go into circles.” The term “one shot” doubling to mean both “a big break” and a literal shot of alcohol seems to intermingle the two definitions with how Casablancas associated his salad days in the band. When it was, quintessentially, the best of times and the worst of times as he went on his nightly benders as the lead singer of one of the most sought after bands in the world. And yes, becoming an alcoholic is a key part of “enjoying” the “New York experience” if one truly wants to do it right. A spiral that becomes increasingly less “cute” and less appealing as one leaves their twenties and sees the “diminishing returns” (words used in the song) on their financial investment in alcohol in comparison to the “good times” they’re achieving less and less with drunken behavior.
Accordingly, the theme of this song transitions into “Bad Decisions,” another 80s-drenched number that incorporates Billy Idol’s “Dancing With Myself” into the riff. For the majority of the track, Casablancas bemoans he’s “makin’ bad decisions/Makin’ bad decisions for you”–the “you” in this sense likely referring to the fans who tend to cringe when the band gets “experimental” a.k.a. deviates from the template established on Is This It. This is possibly why Casablancas talks of singing in his sleep but choosing to leave it in his dreams, basically admitting that he has learned to suppress certain creative whims instead of taking a risk that might lead to a further ruptured alliance with the band’s precious fans. In many senses, this is what the city of New York has opted to do as well. Selling its emblems of “come one, come all” (e.g. The Statue of Liberty, “Freedom” Tower and Brooklyn Bridge) with resigned indifference, just hoping that the masses will keep buying the lie. And oh, how they do. How shockingly they do. Just another testament to how much people want to believe in myth rather than reality. It’s “more pleasant” that way.
Like the kind of “Eternal Summer” more wistfully associated with Rockaway Beach than days spent locked inside one’s hideous NYC apartment (for the average does not live in any of the SATC women’s cush confines). Of course, Casablancas couldn’t have known when he wrote the song that it would feel like a stab in the chest with regard to the feeling of endlessness the summer will have in quarantine. Instead, he seemed to have written the lyrics with another dual intention–on the one hand referring to climate change and, on the other, the allusion to the representation of what summer means in a literary context. It is a moment in time right before the gradual decay that comes with fall, and then, finally, the barren winter of one’s life. For the band, a perpetual existence in a metaphorical season of summer–a.k.a. their early and mid-00s renaissance–seems nice in theory, but would eventually become a Groundhog Day nightmare, just as continuing to live in relative poverty in NYC past one’s twenties does–along with drinking with the same bingeing gusto. Rather than “paradisiacal,” it becomes more of an inferno scenario. Which is why it’s odd, at times, that The Strokes would strive so diligently to “generate” the same sound as before except with “a more wizened tinge.” It doesn’t quite carry off. Though, to be sure, the glimmers of the “old” Strokes are what lures one in and keeps them listening, for a time. That is, until one realizes they could just be truly re-living the “old” Strokes with their actual old albums.
Speaking to one of those glimmers, however, is “At the Door,” the lead single and one of the standouts for the genuine emotionalism resounding from Casablancas’ voice as he laments the demise of a relationship. With a similar feel to 2006’s “On the Other Side,” the sentiment of not having been “enough” for someone leading to said party’s departure from a relationship also channels that rare breed of human who will actually say, “You know what? Enough” to New York. Such a person is the one that NY is simultaneously hurt by yet respects the most. That is, if it had the ability to feel anything at all.
The appropriately lackadaisical “Why Are Sundays So Depressing” feels like a nod to The Velvet Underground’s far more depressing “Sunday Morning.” As well as one to the fact that Sunday is notoriously “hangover day” in New York. And with that association, the one-night stand–hence the lyric, “I love you in the morning, so you know it’s no lie.” Meaning that Casablancas doesn’t want this girl to be a one-off who leaves his apartment as soon as she wakes up. As he didn’t want his recently made ex-wife, Juliet Joslin, to be. But as it is said, “Nothing gold can stay.” Not even the feeling one gets when they first arrive in New York that it could be this exhilarating forever. The type of sentiment captured in a title like “Not the Same Anymore.”
No, not the same anymore indeed. Nor is living in New York and/or looking to it for some kind of “comfort” for its “reliable” “unpredictability”–eventually leading one to the same conclusion: you should have left long ago instead of attempting to recapture a “vibe” that vanished around the time Virgin in Times Square did. With another melancholic backbeat and accompanying vocals, Casablancas rues, “I couldn’t change, it’s too late.” This is the revelation that often comes to those who still choose to ignore it as they go about their usual empty lifestyle in a city that insists it is the most important–therefore most meaningful–place on earth. With a finale that sounds like some sort of organ-based elegy, there is an undeniable mourning for that which has been lost–whether referencing a relationship or the original spirit of the city. At the same time, there is relief in moving on.
The dichotomy of The Strokes resuscitating their “old sound” throughout The New Abnormal is that, of course, they, like everyone else, can’t let go of their roots–nor the New Yorkcentricity that goes with them. So it is that they must conclude with “Ode to the Mets.” On par with “New York City Cops” in terms of being one of the most “New York songs” possible. Unapologetic, yet also overtly abashed, Casablancas asserts, “I’m gonna say what’s on my mind,” to the rhythm of yet another funereal tune. For that is, ultimately, what all of The New Abnormal is–an at long last recognition that time has passed to the point where the band can’t ignore it. Nor can they ignore that the city has changed. Unrecognizable from the magic they once knew in the years when they were coming up. The Gossip Girl years, if you will.
So it is that Casablancas must mimic the decibel of an alley cat about to die as he accedes, “Gone now are the old times/Forgotten, time to hold on the railing/The Rubik’s cube [again with the 80s references] isn’t solving for us/Old friends, long forgotten/The old ways at the bottom of the ocean now has swallowed.” Just as the Atlantic off the coast of NY has swallowed so many victims of mafiosi… back when they were more influential in the, you guessed it, 80s. Coming to terms with the fact that they’re, in many respects, the last of the Mohicans still clinging to a city that has long ago rendered them irrelevant (just as the city renders all non-youths as such) despite being laughably irrelevant itself–except enough of the masses still refuse to address that fact–Casablancas concludes with the naked truth: “The only thing that’s left is us/So pardon the silence that you’re hearing is turnin’ into a deafening, painful, shameful roar.” In plainer terms: escape from New York. Before you can’t. Before you become one of those people still pointing to it as a beacon when it is, in actuality, an extinguisher.
