The 2000's Called - They're Still Making Records
There was a moment in the early "noughts" when it seemed as though indie guitar music was about to save everything.
The Strokes arrived out of New York with Is This It, looking improbably cool, loose and appearing on the covers of music magazines everywhere when music magazines were still a "thing". The hype was enormous. They weren't simply another new guitar band; parts of the music press were anointing them as the saviours of rock 'n' roll. You really had to be there.
They weren't alone, but The Strokes effectively started a proliferation of guitar-based bands. New York had Interpol, who emerged from the same downtown scene but took the post-punk template in a much darker direction. Las Vegas produced The Killers. Australia gave us The Vines, who were briefly being described as everything from "the Australian Strokes" to the next big thing in rock. And down here in New Zealand, The Datsuns were suddenly playing SXSW as part of what the international music press saw as a global return to guitar rock.
Of course The Strokes didn't invent any of this. They tried to tap into Television (without the virtuosity), The Velvet Underground (the more accessible side), garage rock, and new wave . But Is This It became one of the records that crystallised the moment. And with a classic band lineup of frontman, two guitars, bass and drums all boxes were ticked and guitar bands were fashionable again.
And now, roughly a quarter of a century later, three of those acts ,or in Brandon Flowers' case, one of the principal creative forces behind one of them ,have new albums.
The Strokes have Reality Awaits. Interpol have This Mirror Weighs a Ton. And Brandon Flowers, stepping outside The Killers again but carrying much of that band's identity with him, has released THRASHER.
Which raises a question
Twenty-five years on, do these survivors of the early-2000s guitar boom still have something to add to the musical conversation?
1. The Strokes – Reality Awaits
Selecting play and the sound that greets you is not as immediate as "The Adults Are Talking" from 2020's The New Abnormal which gained The Strokes a whole new following with the younger fan (read those born about the time of Is This It ) . Reality Awaits is immediately more eccentric. Opening track "Psycho Shit" finds frontman Julian Casablancas treating his vocals with an auto tune meets vocoder effect.
The effect is unnerving particularly with the synth treatment and guitars buried back in the mix. It's not an isolated case , listen to "Going Shopping" the lead single as a good representation of the sonic approach to the album. The svengali like figure of Rick Rubin is back in the producer role again but this time the result seems less about restoring the Strokes' classic sound and more about giving Casablancas room to bring some of the his side project Voidz's eccentricity into the main band. That's a useful contrast with the 2020 record.
Elsewhere "Falling Out of Love" owes more than a passing reference to U2's "One", whilst "Going to Babble" and "Fruits of Remorse" have that classic Strokes groove , all spiky and nervy and in a good way. "Liars Remorse" is just barking mad noodling that again owes more to the Casablanca's side project Voidz than The Strokes .
It's nothing short of interesting at least and with the exact same line up as always (besides Casablancas there is Albert Hammond Jnr, Nici Valensi, Nikolai Fraiture and Fabrizio Moretti) there is a sense of respect and admiration that the band have pushed things this way. However , although I hear a band deliberately refusing to recreate 2001, I'm not convinced all the experimentation results in a meaningful new chapter.
2. Interpol – This Mirror Weighs a Ton
A pleasant sunny Melbourne evening in the outdoor Myer Bowl in late 2023 saw Interpol walk out all dressed in black accompanied by dry ice . Frontman Paul Banks had a pair of Ray Bans on oblivious to the bright Aussie colours and never took them off. The occasion was the 20th anniversary of the debut Turn On The Bright Lights and the bands set (opening for Bloc Party) did not disappoint mining songs from that album as well as the follow up release, the superior and career highpoint Antics.
There have been intermittent releases from Interpol over the years, along with one significant line-up change. Bass player and visual identity Carlos Dengler departed in 2010, leaving the band effectively operating as a three-piece in the studio, with Banks taking on bass duties.
So This Mirror Weighs a Ton arrives with a couple of interesting changes. Longtime touring musicians Brad Truax on bass and Brandon Curtis on keyboards have now become official members, while producer Andrew Wyatt brings a noticeably broader sonic palette to the album. Keyboards, synths, strings, woodwind and even acoustic guitar appear throughout, although the result still sounds unmistakably like Interpol.
The lead and title track is the most obvious example. Against a menacing synth pulse and a bass line with more than a hint of Massive Attack, Banks is at his edgy best: “But the maniac in your head / still sleeps in archways.” It's atmospheric, spacious and slightly unsettling, and sounds like Interpol viewed through a different lens. Several reviews have picked it out as the album's most radical departure, although interestingly the rest of the record doesn't always follow where that track suggests it might go.
Elsewhere, the band continue to decorate their familiar sound with some unexpected additions. There's woodwind on “Bird and the Serpent”, strings elsewhere, and acoustic guitar on the rather bizarrely named “So Rides the Reindeer”. That latter track is perhaps the clearest indication that Interpol are prepared to venture outside their usual territory.
But despite all these new ingredients, it's still the voice of Paul Banks and the signature angular guitar tones of Banks and Daniel Kessler that make sure Interpol don't stray too far from their MO. The band may have changed the furniture, but you still know exactly which house you're in.
And perhaps that's the interesting thing about This Mirror Weighs a Ton. Unlike The Strokes, who seem happy to throw some fairly strange ideas at the wall and see what sticks, Interpol have expanded their palette without abandoning the architecture that made them distinctive in the first place. Whether that constitutes genuine reinvention or simply a particularly well-executed version of Interpol 2.0 is another question.
3. Brandon Flowers – THRASHER
If there are two songs from the indie guitar wave of the early 2000s that remain as prominent in 2026 as they were then, one must be “Seven Nation Army” by The White Stripes and the other The Killers' “Mr Brightside”. If New Zealand audiences are anything to go by, “Mr Brightside” is also the reason for a sizeable proportion of the crowd to drink themselves silly during a Killers concert. Having seen The Killers twice or, more accurately, Brandon Flowers and drummer Ronnie Vannucci Jr. surrounded by auxiliary musicians in 2018 and 2022 , I can vouch that there is a distinct feeling that everything else is leading towards THAT song.
The Killers themselves seem to exist primarily in the mind of Brandon Flowers these days, but he has also released two solo albums: Flamingo in 2010, which wasn't exactly a radical departure from The Killers, and The Desired Effect in 2015, which leaned heavily into his beloved 1980s influences (New Order, The Cars and Bronski Beat, whom he even sampled).
So another solo album isn't a huge surprise. What is surprising is where Flowers has gone this time. THRASHER (yes, it is in capitals for some reason ) is a full-on country record.
Flowers came close to this territory with The Killers' Pressure Machine in 2021, which had a distinctly Americana feel, but THRASHER goes considerably further. The opening run of “Does It Ever Cross Your Mind?”, “One Of Us” and “Tiger's Blood” points directly towards Nashville: fiddles, harmonica, backing vocals and a cast of highly respected players including David Rawlings, Bruce Bouton and Charlie McCoy. “Paradise” pushes even further into straight country territory.
It is initially disconcerting. Hearing Brandon Flowers - a singer so closely associated with synthesizers, enormous choruses and 1980s new wave , suddenly sounding like he has wandered into a Nashville studio can feel a little like hearing Meat Loaf or Roy Orbison make a country record. And Flowers' voice is particularly interesting in this setting.
Whether you think this is a revelation or a diversion probably depends on how much you buy Flowers as a country singer. The Nashville musicians are the real deal, and Flowers has clearly done his homework, drawing on the country music he heard growing up in Nevada and Utah. Several critics have also pointed out that this isn't simply a genre experiment but a continuation of the small-town storytelling he began exploring on Pressure Machine.
For me, though, the album becomes much more convincing when Flowers starts moving back towards the territory he explored on Pressure Machine. Halfway through, “Miss America” is a heartbreaking ballad written from a female perspective, dealing with growing up amid abuse in Salt Lake City. From there, THRASHER increasingly feels like Pressure Machine Mark II, and that's where Flowers sounds most comfortable.
“Angel” continues the character-driven storytelling, while “In A Heartbeat” is one of the album's strongest songs. “The Red Ground”, with its unexpected mariachi horns, is something of a misstep for me, but it doesn't derail what becomes a strong second half.
And perhaps that's the interesting thing about THRASHER. Flowers has always been an artist who wears his influences very openly. The Killers moved from indie guitar thrash to Springsteen to new wave and beyond without ever seeming particularly worried about staying in one musical lane. Now he's gone back to the country music of his childhood and made an entire album out of it.
I admire the ambition, and there are some excellent songs here. But I can't quite shake the feeling that I'm waiting for Brandon Flowers to get this particular musical itch out of his system and return to the 1980s where, for me at least, he remains at his most interesting.
My review of Pressure Machine is available here
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