Updated

Updated · The Guardian · Jul 6

19 Writers Recall Landmark Concerts From 1977 Talking Heads to Beyoncé’s 2018 Coachella Set

Updated

Updated · The Guardian · Jul 6

19 Writers Recall Landmark Concerts From 1977 Talking Heads to Beyoncé’s 2018 Coachella Set

Q: With The Strokes' new album due this month, how has their sound evolved from that raw 2001 Boston performance?

The Strokes have moved from a lean, guitar-led garage-rock attack to a broader, more polished and experimental sound. At that 2001 Boston show, they were still the unknown New York band whose appeal lay in taut, gritty songs, interlocking guitars and Julian Casablancas’s dry, detached delivery. That sound became the template for *Is This It*: brisk, economical, hook-heavy rock with a ragged Velvet Underground-style cool. As their career progressed, the core traits remained — concise songwriting and strong guitar interplay — but the music widened. *Room on Fire* largely refined the debut formula, while *First Impressions of Earth* pushed harder and darker. On *Angles* and *Comedown Machine*, they brought in brighter synth textures, more new-wave and synth-pop influence, and more intricate rhythms, moving beyond straight garage rock. Their 2020 album *The New Abnormal*, which won the Grammy for Best Rock Album, was widely seen as a mature synthesis: still recognizably The Strokes, but more atmospheric, melodic and controlled than the band heard in Boston in 2001. The new album, *Reality Awaits*, appears to continue that evolution rather than reverse it. Reporting around the record says it was made with Rick Rubin in Costa Rica, and the single “Going Shopping” pairs jangly guitars with noticeable AutoTune on Casablancas’s vocals. That suggests a band still willing to alter its textures and vocal presentation, even as it keeps the melodic economy that defined its earliest work.

1 articles · Updated · The Guardian · Jul 6

19 writers revisit concerts they say became defining live-music moments, spanning Talking Heads at London’s Rock Garden in 1977 to Beyoncé’s Coachella headline show in 2018.
Several accounts focus on artists just before or during breakthroughs: Nirvana at the Astoria in 1989, Oasis at the 100 Club in 1994, the Strokes in Boston in 2001 and Arctic Monkeys in Sheffield in 2005.
Other memories center on performances that shifted an artist’s stature or public image, including Daft Punk’s 24ft pyramid show at Wireless in 2007, Kanye West winning over Glastonbury doubters in a 90-minute 2015 set and Kate Bush’s return after 35 years.
The collection also revisits more complicated legacies, from Kevin Rowland being booed off after 15 minutes in 1999 to Britney Spears’s 2018 O2 dates, later reframed by revelations from her conservatorship case.

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The Guardian13h ago

Writers Recall Legendary Concerts by Beyoncé, Daft Punk, Nirvana, and Kanye West

How did artists like Kate Bush and Beyoncé transform concerts from music gigs into immersive theatrical events?

When does an iconic performance become a personal 'enemy,' as seen with My Chemical Romance and Britney Spears?

With The Strokes' new album due this month, how has their sound evolved from that raw 2001 Boston performance?

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1 total

The Guardian13h ago

Writers Recall Legendary Concerts by Beyoncé, Daft Punk, Nirvana, and Kanye West

19 Writers Recall Landmark Concerts From 1977 Talking Heads to Beyoncé’s 2018 Coachella Set

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