The Strokes
The Strokes arrived in 2001 with Is This It, a debut that felt like garage rock dragged through New York City grime and delivered with studied nonchalance. Julian Casablancas' compressed, megaphone-filtered vocals, Nick Valensi and Albert Hammond Jr.'s interlocking guitar lines, and Nikolai Fraiture and Fabrizio Moretti's propulsive rhythm section created a sound that bypassed grunge's heaviness for something leaner and more angular. The album sold over two million copies and effectively reanimated guitar music for a generation weaned on electronica and nu-metal.
Their influences stretched from the Velvet Underground's downtown cool to Television's jagged precision, repackaged for the early 2000s with deliberate lo-fi production. Subsequent records like Room on Fire (2003) and Angles (2011) revealed tensions between accessibility and experimentation. The New Abnormal (2020) won a Grammy, proving their endurance beyond revival nostalgia.
The Strokes became synonymous with indie rock's commercial breakthrough, inspiring countless skinny-jeaned imitators while maintaining an ambivalent relationship with their own influence. They remain both architects and prisoners of a specific aesthetic moment.
