The Strokes in Dublin review: Last Nite and a blistering New York City Cops bring an out-of-body moment to 3Arena

The Strokes

There’s a glaring contrast throughout The Strokes’ sold-out show at 3Arena on Wednesday night between the New York indie band’s jaded nonchalance and the enthusiasm with which their music is lapped up by an audience that, on average, looks a good 25 years younger than the musicians on stage.

Being too cool for school was key to the appeal of The Strokes from the beginning of their spectacular rise in the early 21st century – fair enough given that the school where the core members of the group met was the €175,000-a-year Institut Le Rosey, in Switzerland.

But, whereas projecting studied indifference is fine when you’re playing one of the dingy New York clubs where The Strokes cut their teeth, it’s perhaps less so when you’re demanding €100 a head for people to come and see you in an arena.

They fell off their tightrope in spectacular style several days before Dublin, when fans in Newcastle were disappointed by the band apparently cutting short their encore to obey a curfew. Back in the day that might have come across as sticking two fingers to the man. But when you’re charging the nosebleed prices the Strokes are looking for on this tour – all in, my seat (with less than stellar views) cost a whopping €113 – you need to put on a show and fake some of the enthusiasm that has long been their kryptonite.

They appear to have received that message at their Dublin show, serving up the sort of nostalgia that their overwhelmingly Gen Z audience craves while largely glossing over their dreadful latest album, Reality Awaits.

The band rewind to their 2001 debut, Is This It, a love letter to old-school New York postpunk that has become a treasured artefact for those too young to remember the Y2K era, let alone the genre’s roots in the dystopian 1970s.

These songs really are special – all the more so for their apparent effortlessness. Coasting on Albert Hammond jnr’s deft guitar janglings, Hard to Explain exudes a scuzzy indie magic that sweeps you away from the soulless corporate purgatory of 3Arena back to whatever crumbling alt-rock hovel it first took shape in.

A grungy urgency intrudes on Reptilia, the standout from Room on Fire, their second album, from 2003, a record conceived in the glare of the overnight rise that made The Strokes the most fashionable band on the planet until their apparent lack of interest caught up with them.

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Julian Casablancas remains the group’s lodestar and also its Achilles heel. He comes across as really being over the whole rock-star thing. When he says, “Dublin, let’s raaaaawk,” at the start, he’s clearly doing it a bit. But you can’t fake cool. He radiates loucheness even as the audience has an out-of-body moment when the band rip through Last Nite and a blistering New York City Cops.

Tonight there are two encores. As the set hurtles to a close, Casablancas seems actually to be feeling something. “You guys are the best, man,” he says at the very end. “Don’t change.” Just for a moment, it’s almost as if he cares.