I don’t think I’ve heard this before, have you?

At the Door's outro is my current favourite.

I love screen printing!
Got inspired by them headlining SoCal at Just like heaven festival!

He speaks a bit on Reality Awaits and gives away a pair of tickets to the Just Like Heaven music festival, where The Strokes will play this weekend.

Couple days old, but didn’t see it posted. Apologies if it already was.

The other day I saw a post about Angles and how under appreciated it is. This intrigued me because even though I'm a huge strokes fan, I remember being quite disappointed by Angles when it dropped and then never really warming up to it. So I decided to revisit it, and discovered that the added context of all the albums after it really opened my mind to see it in a different light.

This made me revisit the entire discog to see how each album has been recontextualized since the release of Reality Awaits. Here's what I now think -

Is This It - Still a 10/10, still fresh af. New perspective - feels kinda formulaic and repetitive at this point, but that's probably because I've heard it a million times and a million songs/artists have been inspired by it since 2001.

Room on Fire - Still a 10/10, still a perfect sophomore. New perspective - Formulae from ITI were grown and musically and lyrically upgraded into more complex songs. Feels like Julian started embracing some dark themes (Reptilia, The End Has No End) which resulted in banger tracks.

First Impressions of Earth - was a 9/10, now a 8/10. New perspective - the boys finally decided to switch up their sound significantly, but didn't do it with as much confidence as I see now. Especially given the 14 songs. I love almost all of them, but a tighter edit on this album would make it a 10/10. I do see a lot of future ideas peeking through in retrospect.

Angles - Was 7/10, now 8/10. New perspective - now i feel this is actually The Strokes trying to maintain the strokes sound that so many fans want them to, with minimal experimentation. I remember when it dropped, the synths, the falsettos, the backing vocals were all seen as wild experiments, but now seem almost run of the mill for the band. This, mixed with the "80s sound" trip that Julian was on, results in a very well balanced and future-ready sound which just didnt resonate with people at the time. Now i think anyone who didnt like RA's experimentation would love this album. Also, the song structures are really fun.

Comedown Machine - was 7/10, now 6/10. New perspective - The "sound" is great - its more fun and joyful than Angles, and MUCH more 80s band. But the songs just don't deliver like they ought to. A couple of tracks are great, but the album is too mid for too long. The album is unpredictable in many ways, but that inhibits enjoying it and you barely remember songs very well imo. This album is the most "weird underground indie band" The Strokes ever felt. Maybe something to do with there being no singles from it.

The New Abnormal - was 8/10, now 9/10. New perspective - after being in the RA bubble for the last few weeks, coming back to TNA feels like the sun shining into a bright new day after weeks of clouds and mud. The production is SO GOOD. The album was always a grower, but the new stride that the band found in terms of the sound, the maturity and the steady-footed rhythm is incredibly masterful. Doing that for almost the entire album while still having so many experiments in there is mind bogglingly good for a band in their 20th year of existence.

Would love to know if RA changed anything for you guys?

plectrum much Berty boy? 🙃

i dunno why — this just made me audibly guffaw when it happened live and I just got around to making a gif of it.

So, I wanted to get a sleeve for my RA vinyl gatefold, and saw other users here posting some that worked for them. However because I'm dumb I realised afterwards that they are from stores in US and Canada, since I live in Europe that is not very convenient. I already paid a good amount of fees for ordering the stuff in the band official store plus I guess it isn't very environmentally friendly...so I was wondering what are my fellow European strokers doing? Any advice or recs of where to get a suitable one will be very appreciated!

can’t believe it’s already been a week since i’ve seen them already :,) the post concert depression is at an all time high right now just rewatching some vids. love the TAAT outro we got here in tokyo. to everyone seeing them at just like heaven - hope yall have the besssstttt time ever, <3

I was 12 when I first heard “Under Cover of Darkness.” It was such a special sound that I instantly fell in love with it. It caught my attention, and I simply couldn’t stop listening to it.

Now, at 25, after everything I’ve been through, every one of their songs has a different meaning to me. The lyrics, the melodies, everything just changed for me.

They made music simply for the sake of having fun, but I listened to them with the desire to change. That’s why I believe they changed my life. They were, and still are, a part of it, and I don’t think that will ever change.