The Strokes won the 2021 Grammy Award for Best Rock Album. LP from 2020 album The New Freak broke records for Sturgill Simpson (Sound and Fury), Fontaines DC (Death of a Hero), Michael Kiwanuka (Kiwanuka), and Grace Potter (Daylight), giving New York City veterinarians their first Grammy award.
Speaking to reporters in the virtual press room after their victory, the Strokes answered a question about “the state of rock’n’roll now,” said Casablancas, “I kind of always make fun of rock’n’roll, so I I think it’s funny, or cool, or appropriate, that we won the prize. I think people who say things are dead, I feel like their imagination has possibly died … Honestly, there is room for so many music genres – not necessarily blues rock, please, enough of that.
The New Freak marked the Strokes’ first studio album in about seven years after 2013 Descending machine. They debuted one of The New Freaktracks – “Bad Decisions” – at a rally in 2020 for Bernie Sanders. In 2016, the group launched its Future Present Past EP.
Read “The Urban Malaise of The Strokes’ That’s it, 15 years later ”in the field. Follow all the coverage of the 2021 Grammy Pitchfork.