new one … work in progress … there are a few .. https://t.co/jPeNYiNVEz

— Thom Yorke (@thomyorke) July 10, 2022

The band played the Spanish music festival in Barcelona exactly a month before this tweet on June 10th, with Julian Casablancas from The Strokes taking to his social media to rave about their performance. Calling it the “best show i’ve seen in YEARS“, Casablancas posted a short video of The Smile, comprised of Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood and Sons Of Kemet’s Tom Skinner, on his Instagram saying “had my mind blown, best show i’ve seen in YEARS ……The Smile – shiiiiiiit that was good. like phillip glass with miles chords with in rainbows Radiohead or something… idk. insane festival overall honestly …Tyler / Tame Impala etc so many other champions too … thank you thank you & thank you to all of it and all who came to the show“.

The Smile only just just released their debut album A Light For Attracting Attention back in May of this year on XL Recordings, so it’s somewhat surprising but exciting that they already have new music in the pipeline. Their debut peaked at No.5 on the UK Albums Chart and gained significant critical attention, with Pitchfork giving it a solid 8.6, and SPIN calling it their album of 2022, it certainly wasn’t a misstep from the kings of alternative rock.

The snippet of “Colours Fly” revealed from their performance at Primavera seems to put the song in a psychedelic desert rock kind of world, with Thom Yorke riffing over a bass guitar whilst singing “If you change your mind, I won’t be surprised, Let the colours fly“, it’s reminiscent of Angus Stone’s trippier work with side project Dope Lemon and seems to be in the band’s hypnotic sweet spot. The next time they will play live in the UK will be at All Points East Festival in London’s Victoria Park supporting Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds’ on Sunday the 28th of August. Aside from that they have no further UK shows booked, but a tour across Europe locked in for June and July and a tour across America booked in for November and December. Let’s hope for new music soon!

Though it’s clear that the singer has a deep love for the city of Glasgow, it seems his mind was elsewhere during the show at TRNSMT when he said; “I haven’t been to Glasgow in a long time. I don’t recognise the place.”

He then added; “The Barrowlands where we used to play, I miss that place. I miss being pulled to shreds by the Glasgow crowd. It’s a fun place. My memories of Glasgow… always the most chaotic, violent shows of my life. This is a nice change of pace though. Next time, the Barrowlands.”

The feedback from the gig varies. In a lot of cases, the fans stated that whilst the catchy hits of the indie royalty still sounded great, the periods between each track which saw Casablancas dish out bizarre rants and banter to the attendees were less palatable.

As a long time Strokes fan, I felt genuinely worried about Julians wellbeing tonight at TRNSMT.

— Lisa Taylor (@LisaTaylorVol) July 10, 2022

Might be an unpopular opinion, sorry, but my god, The Strokes were dire at TRNSMT tonight.

Julian is borderline Shane McGowan levels of needing an intervention. Worst front man performance I’ve seen.

Sound issues aside, there was no stage presence, just a bit boring.#TRNSMT

— G (@OneManChatting) July 9, 2022

Sounds overdramtic but I think we just witnessed the end of The Strokes. The end of that set was hard to watch, Casablancas genuinely looks like he needs help. They sounded mint but the man looked unwell #trnsmt

— Rex (@AlexBoxteles) July 9, 2022

Sounds overdramtic but I think we just witnessed the end of The Strokes. The end of that set was hard to watch, Casablancas genuinely looks like he needs help. They sounded mint but the man looked unwell #trnsmt

— Rex (@AlexBoxteles) July 9, 2022

TRNSMT was interesting … Julian Casablancas of The Strokes did not bother hiding his disdain for the crowd (he called them Glasgow Children’s Choir and said he’d rather be at the Barrowlands) and to be fair most people were clearly not there for the tunes. Ah well.

— Laura Webster (@LauraEWebsterr) July 9, 2022

It was almost like the strokes would rather have been anywhere else but the main stage at trnsmt

— k (@kfrw_) July 9, 2022

The Strokes should be embarrassed by that excuse for a headlining gig @TRNSMTfest – zero energy, awful set list and slagging off the crowd with gems like ‘Glasgow childrens choir’ and ‘next time we’ll go to barrowlands’ – 15 years of waiting to see them live only to get that!

— Alex Kane (@Beacon_Dev) July 9, 2022

One punter said in this post; “The Strokes should be embarrassed by that excuse for a headline gig- zero energy, awful set list and slagging off the crowd”. Another Fan also commented that Casablancas; “Did not bother hiding his disdain from the crowd (he called them Glasgow Children’s Choir and said he’d rather be at the Barrowlands)”.

Earlier in the week, Casablancaas received much of the same criticism after the Stroke’s performance at Roskilde Festival in Denmark. According to setlist.fm their set started half an hour behind the allotted schedule and according to fans featured much of the same antics, i.e; “lots of erratic and endless banter from Casablancas”.

Following the rumours that he was inebriated during the show, Casablancas took to Twitter (with a message that has since been deleted) with a statement of his own; “I’m not tuned into Twitter things enough to know what some confused fan thinks or pretends they know,” he wrote, “but I’m fine… far as I know … people been asking me weiiird questionnns [sic] – ahh the dumb side of social media… Lame-Os running around so hard and free.”

On the 8^th of July, we sadly saw more of the same, when a woman was pulled from the crowd to join them on stage. Casablancas jested that he has going to head backstage and; “go do some blow”. The woman went on to sing the full six minutes of “Ode To The Mets” while Casablancas was still nowhere to be seen.