You have to admire the cojones of the man who booked Beck to support the Strokes, at the first of 2015’s British Summer Time Hyde Park shows.
Surely such a showman, who can throw Michael Jackson disco-spins through rump-shakers like Sexx Laws, will expose the New York indie legends’ notorious shortcomings?
As E Pro collapses into squealing chaos, and Beck stretches police tape across the stage, it certainly feels like a challenge to the headliners: follow that.
Not that the Strokes have any reason to feel intimidated. This is the band that rejuvenated ailing indie rock in 2001 with a debut album, Is This It, that married retro-pop songwriting with a frenzied, scrappy basement vibe. But they’ve sometimes struggled to carry that raw, garage thrill on to huge festival stages, and largely failed in the attempt to evolve their formula into electro-rock and experimental pop territories on recent albums Angles and Comedown Machine.
Plus, they’re the last gang in town who, 14 years on, can barely align their egos and schedules to play or record together. The stage is bare except for amps, kit and a sparse row of lights. Few expect fireworks.
Yet the Strokes are swept onstage on a tide of hero worship and play like Iggy expects. Albert Hammond Jr, having conquered a drug habit that reportedly involved injecting a mix of cocaine, heroin and ketamine 20 times a day, spews speedball riffs with a firm-jawed vigour.
Once-static singer Julian Casablancas, sporting a post-apocalyptic neon mullet that suggests he’s been pressganged by Mad Max, has been loosened up by his stint with his psyche-pop side project the Voidz. He spends the night in high spirits – pretending to introduce Shabba Ranks as a guest on Someday, claiming they’re “a fuck band” and bending double to howl like a psychopathic 50s crooner.
As tight as their old jeans, the band fly through itchy, urgent bursts of amphetamine rock’n’roll with a dynamic intensity, as though racing each other to the next solid-gold chorus. Of which there are many.
It’s their earlier tracks – Hard To Explain, Reptilia, New York City Cops, an irrepressible Last Nite – that send the crowd into communal nostalgic shimmies, wailing passionately along to songs they’ve only ever been able to make out half the words to. But a canny selection of latter tunes, such as the funk-disco Welcome to Japan and beach-ska boogies Machu Picchu and Under Cover of Darkness prove that Casablancas’s hook radar remains well-tuned.
The Strokes may be generation-defining icons whose supernova long since collapsed under its own gravity, but they still play like teen demons in heat.
