Music

Julian Casablancas says new Strokes album has "been a labour"

by Ciaran Thompson

During an interview with English radio station XFM at last weekend’s T in the Park festival in Scotland, Julian Casablancas said the new Strokes album has “been a labour,” when asked whether it had been a labour of love. “It’s all good,” he added. “I was going to make a joke and say it was a labour of necessity, but no, it’s going to be fantastic.”

Fans of The Strokes have been kept on the bubble as to when the next album, their fourth following First Impressions of Earth will be released, but Casablancas recently told BBC 6Music that he predicted for it to come out in March of next year and said it’s “almost halfway done.”

“We’ve wanted to do it for months, or maybe a year now, and then we keep thinking ‘OK, we’ll do it for like these three weeks and we’ll be done’. Then we do it and we decide we’re not done, or something comes in the way,” he said.

The Strokes frontman is still touring in support of his debut solo album Phrazes for the Young and although there are several scheduled dates remaining, making the next album with the band is his top priority.

“The first thing is The Strokes thing,” he said. “If I have an idea for something that I know head to toe, I’ll probably do it on my own, and when I have kind of looser stuff I’ll probably bring it to The Strokes. But right now we’re just trying to finish this record, so lets see how this goes. Let’s make sure no one tries to stab me or something.”

The Strokes recently played at this year’s Isle of Wight festival, one of only a handful of dates confirmed for this summer. Watch the performance of “The Modern Age” off their debut album Is This Is below.