Interview

There was a time when impassioned defenses of favorite Strokes could get as rhetorically bloody as those of favorite Beatles or favorite Jonas Brothers (or what I imagine defenses of the latter sort sound like. That song on my iPod? I'm holding on to it. For a friend.) (PHOTO: NIKOLAI FRAITURE)

The Strokes' last studio album, First Impressions of Earth, was released in 2006. By the time their next album is released early next year, four of the five band members will have released a record on their own. The default term for that kind of venture is "side project," which brands the undertaking as inescapably extracurricular, an extra hustle that is alternatively judged too leniently or harshly because it is–by definition–the thing that is not the main project. It's an unfair connotation, but one that's been historically reinforced. See: JC Chasez.

Google "solo career" and you'll find that the fourth suggestion is a link to Albert Hammond Jr.'s MySpace Music page. That's not an unrealistic cognitive connection to make. His two releases since the Strokes hiatus began, ¿Como Te Llama? and Yours to Keep brim with potential. They're solid albums , and through them, Hammond Jr. has likely gained a larger audience. "It's Hard Living in the City", off Yours to Keep, was included in the Gossip Girl soundtrack. Some of the songs sound like potential Strokes tracks left on the cutting room floor as envisioned by Conor Oberst. That's not a bad thing. There's a consistency that's less present in Nikolai Fraiture's record, The Time of the Assassins, a party of an album that features guests like Regina Spektor and Nick Zinner of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

These three records feel like side projects. The problem is not that they're not good (they are) or that they've remained obscure (Nikolai even got the Mark Ronson remix) but that they remind us that the Strokes are currently broken, if not broken up, and that something very good will come of their return. 

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