10 Late Career Bangers From Huge Rock Bands

Ten years after the holier-than-thou New Yorkers slew nu-metal with their debut record, Is This It, and became their generation’s Nirvana (who, we are told, were their generation’s Sex Pistols), The Strokes released their fourth album, Angles, and like most of their oeuvre, it was fine.

Under Cover Of Darkness is track 2 on the record, and its first single, and, well, it’s a banger. It manages to be everything The Strokes promised they would be back in 2001, but with the extra swagger that the band had arguably been missing in the years they were trying to live up to their own hype. From the jaunty drumbeat, squealing lead guitar licks and chuntering rhythm guitar to Julian Casablancas’ cocksure vocal melody and almost lackadaisical delivery, everything about this track screams “this is us, take it or leave it”, and it was, in 2011 exciting to see what the seemingly refreshed band would offer up next. It wasn’t much, as it happens, but a good song is good song.

It transpired that the reason Casablancas sounded so lethargic was that he wasn’t really interested in recording the album and taped his vocals separately from the rest of the band. Ah well, they got back on track later and continued trotting out decent enough tunes but, from a decidedly subjective point of view, they did not manage to write a song like this again.