(The Strokes, 2020)
“Punk is not a fashion statement!” is yelled over a PA to a gaggle of drunken college students, all of which are gathered around its speaker and his guitar. This sentiment is met with mostly dead eyes and indifference. What was once a rallying cry for rockist authenticity has drifted into fogeyish rambling. Beyond punk, rock music has always been linked to this concept of authenticity and as a reaction to the theatrics of pop music. Fashion has always been intrinsically connected to rock music: as The Beatles shed their mop tops and matching suits for unruly hair and tea shades, they were transitioning from teen-friendly guitar pop into, well, The Beatles. This balance has always been apparent but not easy to strike, as the artists’ visual appearance and sonic stylization must cohere into a cogent representation. This aesthetic verisimilitude has long been what defines the visual memories of music’s past and is a continuous necessity for bands in a market where rock music has decreased in public demand.
Even if the genre has diminished, there is an essential element of its history with fashion to be studied. But we need not delve into the fashion instincts of major artists like Imagine Dragons whose genreless banality is reflected by their mostly anonymous image, but at an artist whose lasting success has always been tied to their reputation as fashion statements. The Strokes were the last breath of counterculture before the internet monopolized it for the better; a curation of record store favorites and modern pop sensibilities that defined a generation of suburban teenagers making noise in their parents’ garages.
In contrast, the beginning of the 21st century was the nadir of rock music, with the alpha self-pitying bro bands of post-grunge and nu-metal flooding the radio. New York City similarly was a dead zone for music the decade prior. The Strokes were not just a creation but a reaction: a return to the muddy, noisy, guitar music drenched in admiration for the CBGB-era of post-punk, garage rock, and new wave, and their appearance was a rejection of not the glamourized teen pop of mainstream top 40 but the sterile radio rock that pushed the genre into a creative recession.
(left to right: Nikolai Fraiture, Fabrizio Moretti, Julian Casablancas, Albert Hammond Jr., Nick Valensi, circa Is This It)
The Strokes crafted an image that matched their sound, effortless on the surface but absolutely deliberate. Just as they pulled from the NYC canon of great acts of the Velvet Underground, Television, and The Ramones, their wardrobe of vintage iconography of Chuck Taylors and tight denim reflected it. They unwittingly doubled as a generational band and as a fashion statement (a criticism a majority of the post-punk-revival spent the first half of the decade shaking off). They were ungroomed, drenched in sweat under the club spotlights because leather jackets were obviously essential. It has gone far from unnoticed throughout their careers of their own private school upbringing and upper-class backgrounds. Perhaps they were just another band in a long line of bourgeois fetishization of bohemian imagery, but even if that was the case nobody made it look as good as The Strokes. Their hair was always unkempt, their t-shirts always two decades backwards. Looking back, singer and frontman Julian Casablancas’ lasting stamp on modern music comes not solely from his inventiveness as a songwriter or his distorted shout, but how effortlessly, enigmatically, cool he was. The rest of the band followed suit.
Is This It has famously been referred to by its own record label as the most unprofessional sounding album in the history of RCA. It was a meat and potatoes record straight from the garage. It was exciting enough to gather the kind of media hype for which a lesser band would instantly crumble under. They were the leaders of a new rock revolution. As a reflection of that, their fashion was simple: create the 1970s SoHo revolution that should have been. Nostalgia only can exist with rose-tinted goggles but The Strokes don’t strive for historical revisionism. The music of the 1970s may have been dominated by milquetoast soft rock and bloated conceptual pretensions, but they served to reclaim a bygone era through emulating its best traits: with skinny ties, shaggy hair, and casual suit blazers. A look that carried them over their next two records.
(The Strokes on SNL, 2011)
“We’ve never changed our look for an album” claimed guitarist, Nick Valensi, honestly but prematurely in 2006. By this time, they briefly flirted with velvet suits and Casablancas even winkingly leaned into his own European private school upbringing by matching a regal tailored jacket with bright red Vans slip-ons. Five years later, we saw them aging into the 1980s on the new wave-influenced Angles. They were still the same Strokes but slicker, flashier, and gaudier. They juxtaposed big sunglasses and bright neon accessories with vintage Stooges tees reflected their growth. In what might be the definitive metaphor for the push-and-pull growth of The Strokes, drummer Fabrizio Moretti and guitarist Albert Hammond Jr. cut their hair short, while bassist Nikolai Fraiture cut the sleeves off of John Lennon’s iconic New York City t-shirt
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The Strokes by this point were far from the beloved, having each record since First Impressions of Earth released to a mixed reception and the overwhelming rise of The Nouns copycat bands pushing the genre into landfill indie. Due to internal tensions, the rest of the 2010s were spent scattered apart outside of 2013s Comedown Machine, an album which the band dropped amongst a reclusive media blackout to get out of a record contract. Though, if they were not together, that did not make them any less prolific. While off traversing into the unknown with his side project The Voidz, Casablancas dons a more chaotic style of post-ironic racecar driver jackets and haphazard modernization of the mullet. It swallows bad taste whole and regurgitates it into a semi-futurist reclamation of bohemian aesthetic.
(Julian Casablancas live, 2019)
In 2020, we have two new Strokes songs (one of which is the best track they’ve released since “Under the Cover of Darkness”), a new album on the horizon, and Julian Casablancas standing shoulder-to-shoulder with democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. Three years earlier, hip hop surpassed rock music as the most popular genre in music, the completion of a cycle for one genre that had grown tired in the public conscious, but an essential new beginning for it to re-invigorate itself. Freed from the burden of “saving rock n’ roll”, they are able to forge forward as they always without expectations. We see The Strokes carefree again, indulging in loud, ornate layers, that uniquely feel thirty years old and completely new at the same time.
Music is an auditory medium, but not exclusively. When drawn back to the great live performances I’ve attended, it has never been one of comfort. Rock music has always been about capturing a kinetic energy and broadcasting it to those willing to be inspired by it, be it physically, emotionally, or creatively. Nobody is inspired by a cover band wearing cargo shorts or flip flops. The great concerts I’ve been to create this sense of admiration that would be lost without a strong visual style. You don’t want to feel like you know the band, you want to be the band. You wish you looked that good because for an hour to an hour and a half they look like rock stars. Even if you can’t play guitar, you can at least wear the same shirt as Julian Casablancas and feel like you can. Memorable rock music has always had a strong visual component to it, it may not be a fashion statement but it has always helped to be fashionable.
- Gio Musso
DWF Contributor
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