The Strokes Releases a New Album, “The New Abnormal”

The Strokes have just unveiled their new album, The New Abnormal. This is the sixth album under their belt and is their first release after seven years since The Comedown Machine was unveiled.

This new album has Rick Rubin on the production helm and is comprised of a nine-track set that also includes previously-released singles like “Bad Decisions”, “At The Door”, and “Brooklyn Bridge To Chorus”.

Frontman Julian Casablancas was interviewed by The Guardian and was asked with what he meant when he said at a 2019 concert that the band had taken most of the ’10s off. He admitted that the band succumbed to “some grey areas on control and on quality, fueled with the traditional, less exciting and more cliched elements of a rock band’s success – grossness. I think wanting to be in charge and wanting something to be good are different things. One is about selfishness, the other is about something objective. Is this person just an egomaniac wanting control or is it someone who can actually make it better? And that’s just life.”

He also looked back at the time when the band stepped away from the stage, saying, “I guess it’s not that controversial, really. There was conflict and there was fear, and we got through it and we made records, but it wasn’t, you know, out of pure brotherly love and musical inspiration.”

Albert Hammond Jr., the band’s guitarist, also said that the new album gave them a sense of possibility for greater things in the future, saying, “What we could do next excites me more than I have been excited in, I don’t know, our whole career.”