The Strokes are finally back to making new music. At Lollapalooza last summer, the band absolutely shredded through a set of their best songs from early EPs, their game-changing debut Is This It, arguably sonically perfected sophomore effort Room On Fire and black sheep of the bunch First Impressions of Earth. All the while, the Top-40 followers were underwhelmed by Lady Gaga throwing fake blood on herself in the concert equivalent of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark across Grant Park. The Strokes showed up late and finished early, but put on such a good show that everyone I talked to couldn’t figure out why they’d been gone so long that it seemed like a reunion performance instead of the band continuing on together.
After hitting the festival circuit over the past year, the only part missing from The Strokes’ aresenal was playing that one bit of new music to give hope that they hadn’t run out of ideas, that First Impressions of Earth wasn’t their swan song as a group. Finally, after five years, the announcement of a new albumAngles came. Today they released a new song for free for the next 48 hours, “Under Cover of Darkness” with signs of the tight, crackling energy of their debut. There is none of singer Julian Casablancas’ solo debut’s overindulgences or lead guitarist Albert Hammond Jr.’s droll solo work. There is none of the questionable focus from Earth. Rather, the band actually sounds like the one that the now sadly defunct White Stripes pioneered the supposed garage rock revolution of the early 2000s.
The song itself has all the wonderful ingredients of a Strokes favorite: steady yet emphatic drumming, a razor sharp guitar solo and Casablancas’ boozy voice dripping through the speakers. The band sounds refreshed. They have once again stripped away the over complications down to the bare elements necessary to hit a catchy hook and rise to a chorus suitable for jumping around. Welcome back boys, it’s been far too long, we missed you around here.