During most of the 2010s there was a tacit discussion going on when it came to new music from The Strokes. Shall we expect good The Strokes’ songs? Or good songs from The Strokes? For bands with a legacy so explicit as the one the NYC luminaries have to be measured against practically all of their career after 2001’s Is This It, those two questions are more divergent than it may seem.

It translates simply to: The Strokes must stick to their quintessntial sound of short, garage-influenced, rock tracks or they should explore new sounds, and try to succesfully incorporate them to their aesthetic and musicianship. The degree of the aforementioned success has been subject of much heated debate. Personally I think the result has been mixed. I’m in the team of music fans that doesn’t listen any essential material in the last two Strokes’ records, 2011’s Angles and 2013’s Comedown Machine.

And although there were good songs in those albums, both familiarly Strokes (‘Under Cover of Darkness’, ‘All The Time’) and interesting off-shoot experiments (‘Chances’, ‘Machu Picchu’), The New Abnormal finds the band leaning more into the latter, with some surprisingly catchy songs and some compelling ballads. The album opens with ‘The Adults Are Talking’, an engaging and morphing track with characteristic drumming and riffing, adding a passionate vocal delivery from Julian Casablancas that works quite well.

As the track progresses so does the singer’s voice, from a subdued hush to a solid falsetto, while the music reaches a deserved crescendo, with not one, but two guitar solo breaks. It does make a case for one of the best Strokes openers in a while. After it, comes ‘Selfless’, the first ballad of the album and the first example that The New Abnormal actually sounds better when the band aims for something slower. A track centered in loving relationships, ‘Selfless’ is a direct call to a significant other asking for them to come live life with Casablancas: “I don’t have love without your arm/Life is too short, but I will live for you”, he croons with poignancy in the chorus.

The following tracks and singles, ‘Brooklyn Bridge To Chorus’ and ‘Bad Decisions’ are two 80s-oriented tunes, the first one of which is more interesting. Although at times ‘Brooklyn Bridge To Chorus’ sounds a little derivative, it finds its own foot and turns out to be interesting. ‘Bad Decisions’ is somewhat affected by its own intentions. Being that The Strokes share songwriting credits with Billy Idol, the track, while fun, doesn’t reach a memorable high. A lot less interesting is ‘Endless Summer’, a brooding and languid song that is more affected by the long duration present throughout various tracks in The New Abnormal. The melody is forgettable and I don’t understand why the chorus had to destroy whatever the verse built both vocally and instrumentally.

Anyway, after that the record delivers three more arguments in favor of its slower tunes. ‘At The Door’, my favorite of the album, and one of the best songs I’ve heard in 2020, is a synth-driven melancholic track with one of Casablancas best vocal performances. Specially poignant is the alluring chorus that adds a gentle guitar while the singer oh-so painfully exclaims: “Struck me like a chord…/Use me like an oar, and get yourself to shore”, the absolute climax for a song that finely describes frustration after a break-up.

‘Why Are Sundays So Depressing’ is a mid-tempo rocker that serves as an output for the band’s most straightforward composition. Closers, ‘Not The Same Anymore’ and ‘Ode To The Mets’ are two songs that share a slow, steady tempo, the first one driven by guitars and the second one by a main synth track. ‘Not The Same Anymore’ with its linear interaction between verse and chorus, and the deserved catharsis of the latter, wouldn’t feel out of place as a b-side of Room On Fire, in a good way. ‘Ode To The Mets’ reminds you of old songs that you can’t quite place, and it’s the track that best uses its extended duration, being that it grows steadily as it advances.

In the end, in 2020, an album like The New Abnormal couldn’t automatically be one of the best of the year. However, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The Strokes actually have given us an album of several considerably good songs and some stellar ballads; a record that fulfills, for the time being, the expectations for a band that after 7 years we didn’t knew what to expect from anymore. And it probably could stand as the beginning of the long-awaited solid comeback. Then again, who knows?