★★★★☆
I was one of the lucky ones, managing to hitch a conga-like procession heading towards the front, led by one particularly eager Strokes fan. People are fairly touchy about being usurped in the crowd at gigs – especially when, as in this case, tickets cost north of 70 quid – but my general rule is so long as the person behind you can see, things are sweet. Only, at Victoria Park’s All Points East festival, it wasn’t the visuals that would be an issue but the underwhelming sound quality.
My claim to fortune, then, is that by being near the front, I at least experienced something of a reverberating echo, but nothing to set the world alight; later reports of people having left midway through the show might sound slightly odd at first, but understandable having been there. What’s even more remarkable is that poor audio is an issue that Julian Casablancas and co. were blighted by when they last played All Points East. You’d’ve thought they’d give extra due diligence at the sound desk, but alas.
Of course, such frustrations were driven by the fact The Strokes have nostalgic indie bangers aplenty, and fans wanted to hear them in their full, gloriful light. 2001’s Is This It, for instance, marks about as close to a perfect debut album as you can get.
It would be sophomore Room On Fire opener ‘What Ever Happened?’ where the New York outfit would commence proceedings here, though; Casablancas donning his staple fingerless gloves, sleeveless leather jacket and shades, after a typically topsy-turvy day of weather in East London. Insightful documentary Meet Me In The Bathroom – named, of course, after a Strokes song, which was introduced midway through this set – in fact shows the heady high the band were trying to chase after that first record. But here was a reminder that their catalogue truly spans many years, and has many singalong champions.
A subsequent double dose of ‘Alone, Together’ and the ludicrously memorable ‘Last Nite’, however, ensured fans were treated to the good ol’ timers – even if, by now, chants of “turn it up” were being yelled from the back. Yo-yoing between the old and the new, this was followed by ‘The Adults Are Talking’, the opener to their Rick Rubin-produced 2020 album The New Abnormal.
The track’s happy-sad tendency laid out what so effortlessly draws people towards The Strokes, and has done for more than two decades now. So much of their output talks of absence, speaks to a deep void within us (“I don’t, I don’t want anything / I know it’s not, it’s not your fault I don’t want anyone”). This perpetually unsatisfied melancholy – with its talk of ‘Someday’, and questioning of ‘Is This It?’ – is matched perfectly with Casablancas’ languid vocals. It’s just a shame, in this instance, they were hard to discern on account of tech issues, not because the frontman was being purposefully hard to decipher.
It’s for this reason, arguably, that one of the set’s most beautiful moments arrived via ‘Ask Me Anything’, in which the instrumentation is stripped-back. Casablancas’ hollering out into the distance “I’ve got nothing to say / I’ve got nothing to give / Got no reason to live,” was a gutter-punching anthem for the existentially-inclined in the audience.
There was time for some improv, too, in the form of on-the-spot track titled ‘Fallacy’. Whether or not the title was equally made-up is anyone’s guess, but the track sounded atmospheric and guitar-heavy, Casablancas down on his knees at one point, murmuring at-times nonsensical refrains. This went on, fortunately, right up until the point of self-indulgence, before the shimmering Comedown Machine number ‘Welcome To Japan’ followed, and reinvigorated spirits. Subsequent fan favourite ‘Reptilia’ inevitably cranked this up further still.
Casablancas had promised prior to the Room On Fire tune “we’re going to play one more track then we’re going to do a fake encore,” as though he couldn’t keep up the facade of a pretend walk-out. And whilst he might have killed the surprise, sure enough the band kept their word as they plodded back out for two more beloved debut tunes: the yelling haze of ‘Hard To Explain’ and the album’s opening title track.
If this is really is it, it’s not too shabby at all. But turn it up a bit.
