The Arctic Monkeys’ sixth album, Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino, released in 2018, opens with the line: “I just wanted to be one of the Strokes/Now look at the mess you made me make”. It’s a lyric that speaks directly to the impact the New York rock band had on culture in the 2000s. The Strokes were in many ways responsible for the return of faded denim, long, scruffy hair, bands in suits and soaring post-punk songs about sex and youth that could make you feel impossibly free.
When they appeared on the scene, childhood friends Julian Casablancas, Albert Hammond Junior, Nick Valensi, Nikolai Fraiture and Fabrizio Moretti were touted as a band who could take over the world. The hype grew when their debut album, Is This It, was released first in Australia, 20 years ago this month. At the time, as Pitchfork noted in its review of the band’s second record, the buzz around Is This It left “everyone forced to choose sides: ‘saviours of rock!’ or ‘everything that’s wrong with music today!’”. Whichever you take, it’s difficult to imagine what the 2000s would have looked and sounded like without
the Strokes.
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