drunken to love you ep 15 The Strokes at the same time I fell for the city that is at the heart of the band and their sound. Both enhanced my love for the other, as that summer I saw New York for the first time. I wanted to see the city this was coming from, and shortly after looking down to earth from the top of the world trade centre, I went into a record store somewhere between Wall Street and Mid-town and bought ‘The Modern Age EP’. Back tracking to their first release, I found demo versions of ‘The Modern Age’, ‘Barely Legal’ and ‘Last Nite’. The songs were so fantastically instant that even on first listen, you felt as though you’d heard them before. Because you’d always wanted to. The EP cemented my obsession and sparked a record label bidding war that was won by a seven-figure offer.
We didn’t sit in the meeting room and say. ‘let’s do this New York sound’. Little by little I’ve realised that the music you make is totally influenced by your surroundings. The tension in New York definitely translates into what we’re doing. I love New York, but you get so fucking aggressive about everything”. (Julian Casablancas, NME, May 2001). New York makes The Strokes better. It’s a city that knows it’s the centre of the earth without caring if you believe it to be true. You can feel the buzz on the streets every time you step outside, as the whole world goes on around you. That buzz is so ingrained in every Strokes record that it might as well be an instrument. Attitude drips off the New Yorker by way of self-belief, instilled by their city, and it pours out at every gig they’ve ever done and the countless confrontations the band encountered early on. A gang mentality grew over street brawls, fuck yous and middle fingers. Together they were conquering the world or fighting it, but they were having a time either way. The coolest new band in the world were also the best of friends, constantly hugging. It was ‘fucking A’.
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