The Strokes

With Special Guest Devendra Banhart and the Grogs

April 01, 2011 at Madison Square Garden

About the Show

When they emerged from the New York scene at the turn of the millennium, the scruffy, hip, Seventies-inflected Strokes seemed to embody the very nature of downtown cool &mdash mixing Lou Reed vocals and as much sweaty, garage-rock mystique as you could pack into three-minute tunes &mdash despite the fact that most of the band had grown up uptown. Thanks to a truckload of positive press and the terrific Modern Age EP, the Strokes were famous before they even put out a full-length album. When they released one, 2001's Is This It, the band backed up the buzz with killer hooks, making New York’s Lower East Side sound cool again.

Their second full-length album, 2003's Room on Fire (Number Four) offered a more polished version of the Is This It template.

For First Impressions of Earth (Number Four, 2006), they expanded their sonic palette, at times almost willfully, casting some doubt as to their direction. Later in 2006, Hammond Jr. released his debut, Yours to Keep, in the U.K.; it saw U.S. issue a year later and his second solo album, Como Te Llama? was released in July 2008, shortly after Casablancas&rsuot; single with Pharrell and Santogold promoting Converse dropped.

The band?s much anticipated upcoming album, Angles, drops on March 22 from RCA records in the U.S.