Ronan O'BrienThe Strokes are a band that defined an entire generation of music. It’s no surprise that Is This It has been lauded as one of the greatest albums of the Noughties. It basically became the script for every good indie album. Although the band played to their strengths, their style was timeless. Albums like Room on Fire and First Impressions of Earth both produced chart-reaching hits, cementing the band’s success. Post-2010, the band’s releases came more sporadic. Angles was fantastic in its own right, but Comedown Machine fell flat of the band’s familiar success. The latter completed the group’s five album deal with RCA before they became self-managed under Julian Casablancas’ Cult Records.
Following a near five year hiatus, the band announced they were back in the studio, this time under the ingenuity of Rick Rubin. The first announcement came courtesy of Albert Hammond Sr., who accidentally spilled the details in an interview with The West Australian. His son, who plays guitar in the band, quickly tried dispelling the rumours to little avail. Even Casablancas made a joke about the situation, tweeting “What Albert Sr meant to say is we are working with NBA point guard Ricky Rubio on a new offense for our basketball league“. They eventually came clean and announced the new album at the Governor’s Ball in 2019, premiering Ode to the Mets.
The album was eventually released on April 10th 2020, to critical acclaim, winning the band’s first Grammy award in the process. Personally, I think it’s fantastic and it became the soundtrack to the infamous lockdown of 2020. The album signalled the band returning to their roots, albeit more polished and assured, in true Rick Rubin-produced fashion.
The New (Ab)normal
The album title reflects some terminology we became incredibly tired of throughout 2020. However, this was chosen by mere coincidence. The album name actually derived from a speech made by a former Californian governor. Following the Malibu fires of 2018, Jerry Brown made a gaffe in a speech, citing the increased frequency of wildfires as “the new abnormal“.
The relevancy here is due to the location of Rick Rubin’s studio. The band recorded the album in Shangri-La studio, which somehow escaped the destruction of the Woolsey Fire. This is affirmed by Casablancas, who stated “Everything right around the studio where we were working burned down”. Funnily enough, the timing of the release with the album title made it seem like it was the result of a chain of events executed to absolute artistic perfection. The tracks Endless Summer and Not the Same Anymore can both be applied thematically to the Coronavirus Pandemic.
Bird on Money
The album cover itself is incredibly distinct. When I first saw this, it immediately reminded me of Mach-Hommy‘s 2018 album, Pray For Haiti. It turns out, this is by no coincidence. My uncultured self was unaware that both album covers were art pieces conceived by the same artist, Jean-Michel Basquiat. Although Pray For Haiti uses an imitation piece, The New Abnormal uses the exact piece as the album art. This piece is titled Bird on Money which.
Bird on Money was created in 1981 by Basquiat as a tribute piece to legendary jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker. Charlie “Bird” Parker was a huge influence of Basquiat, who is cited with painting to his music. The piece itself depicts a black yardbird, another nickname given to Parker, on a multicoloured background. The many arrows and symbols are symbolic, quoting different areas of Basquiat’s life. The “Green Wood” is in reference to Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, where Basquiat would later be laid to rest. The words “Para Morir”, meaning “to die” in Spanish, are likely the influence of his mother’s Caribbean-Spanish roots. Further aspects of the image include trees, factory smoke and water, perhaps setting the background of his native New York.
So it makes perfect sense why The Strokes would commission this piece as their album cover. They are one of New York’s finest artistic exports to the world, as much as Jean-Michel Basquiat.
On the Artist
Much like any famed artist, Jean-Michel Basquiat lived a rebellious and unorthodox life. Growing up with an appreciation of art, his career began as part of a graffiti clique. It was not until the early 1980’s before curators began taking notice of Basquiat’s work. An exhibition in The Times Square Show was the breakthrough for him. This led him to selling his first painting, Cadillac Moon to Debbie Harry of Blondie.
Following this success, Basquiat became a residential artist at a number of studios throughout the 1980s. His place in the artistic sphere was cemented by a close friendship with Andy Warhol. The duo collaborated on over 100 pieces of work alongside their semi-romantic friendship. Despite this success, Basquiat slipped into drug addiction, eventually dying as a result of a heroin overdose in 1988, at the tender age of 27. Like many great artists, his ingenuity was not fully realised until after his death. His paintings became incredibly sought after by art collectors, with one even selling for over $110 million in 2017.
To art fanatics, Jean-Michel Basquiat is a household name. But to people like me, The New Abnormal was my introduction to this man’s incredible work. For a band to have image rights to a Basquiat painting, they need to be big. For me, this was a statement by The Strokes. Yes, they are all nepo-babies who met each other in private schools, so access to art curators was probably easy. But the usage of Bird on Money was an artistic statement, telling the world that they are back and as creative as ever.
