The Strokes

The Strokes

There’s so much that bothers me about the Strokes these days. That whole Lower East Side apathetic cool was always something of a put-on, but it worked so brilliantly in the band’s early days; now, when it’s easy to suspect they’re doing this for a paycheck, it comes off as more of a lack of charisma, or a fundamental disengagement from what they’re doing. Maybe I had a bad taste in my mouth from Julian Casablancas’ solo set the day before, or maybe I was just worn out of the feeling that the Strokes’ set at Governors Ball was so thoroughly populated by bros who had somewhere along the line chosen this as their “cool kids” band to like and were now dancing like complete fools to “Someday,” but I did a lot of complaining about the Strokes on Saturday.

Where I’m going with all of this is: it comes from a place of love. The Strokes were a formative band for me, and those frustrations are that I keep seeing glimpses of greatness in their newer work where others don’t, and I just wish they’d push a little closer. All that being said: these guys are true rockstars, maybe the last in the classic sense of the notion. And they know how to please a very large New York crowd that still screams wildly for them. That means it’s a hits set, a whole lot of material from the first two albums that they’ve been playing consistently ever since they became active again before Angles. That’s pretty much fine: those are the barn-burners and the classics, and even if I’d be up for a handful more from Angles or Comedown Machine thrown into the mix, I can’t deny the emotional payoff of seeing the old songs live all these years after the Strokes defined my high school experience. For every faux-aloof thing Julian did that kinda bugged me, there’d be some insane musical peak, like the roar at the end of “Take It Or Leave It,” or finally getting to hear “12:51″ live, or the entirety of “Reptilia.” Those are the rare sorts of moments that are actually better at a festival than a band’s own show, and the Strokes still know how to pull it off.