Music reviews make most sense right after release, when first impressions are fresh and the album sits in the moment it came out. Coming back years later asks a different question, whether it still holds up. The New Abnormal came out in 2020, won a Grammy, and six years on I’m still listening to it. That feels worth writing about.
Ode to the Mets, The Adults Are Talking and Bad Decisions are among my most played tracks of the last few years, from any album.
What keeps bringing me back to this album is the sincerity. It’s a rough diamond, deliberately unpolished. Julian Casablancas sings about friendship, regret, growing older, missed connections and people drifting in and out of our lives. It’s familiar territory, but he sings it like he means every word. The best way I can put it is that the album is nostalgic without sounding trapped in the past.
My introduction to Julian wasn’t through The Strokes. It was through Instant Crush on Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories. Loved the song, never followed through. Then came 2020, with its lockdowns, empty streets and endless uncertainty, and right in the middle of all that, The New Abnormal arrived. Looking back, it was the soundtrack to those strange months, and one of the few good things about them.
My favourite moment on the album comes early in Ode to the Mets, when Julian says, “Drums please, Fab.”
But it's not easy, well, maybe for you
Hope that you find it, hope that it's good
Hope that you read it, think that you should
Cuts you some slack as he sits back
Sizes you up, plans his attack
Ah-da-da
Drums please, Fab.
As I understand it, there wasn’t some elaborate plan behind it. Julian sat at a keyboard, felt something, and said those words. Fabrizio Moretti then improvised the drum part in a single take. There was no rehearsal and no endless revising, and you can hear it.
There’s another layer to Ode to the Mets that I love. As I understand it, the title came from a baseball game where the New York Mets were eliminated, but the song isn’t really about baseball. The Mets become a symbol for that person, dream, or ambition that never quite lived up to expectations, yet you keep rooting for anyway.
Speaking of baseball, if you’re anxious about AI and what it means for the future, watch the music video for The Adults Are Talking. Humans go up against robots in everything from boxing to cooking to baseball. The robots are faster, stronger, and better in every conceivable way, obliterating the humans completely. Then a single raindrop lands on the pitcher robot’s vision sensor. The pitch hits Julian and he walks. The next batter steps up and cracks one deep. Julian rounds the bases and scores. The humans completely lose their minds over that one moment of chance. One tiny imperfection and a lot of luck is all it takes.
The funniest part is that in this future full of hyper-advanced robots, the one thing that hasn’t been automated is the baseball umpire. Considering how many calls they get wrong every season, that might be the least realistic part of the whole video.
I wish I could listen to this album for the first time again. I envy anyone who still gets to discover it.
And if you’ve already fallen for The New Abnormal, we probably have enough in common to share a beer and let Julian soundtrack the evening.
