Louis Griffin reviews Friday’s atmosphere down at All Points East, with iconic headliners The Strokes finishing off the evening.
“Is this it?”
It’s a question that The Strokes have been asking for almost their entire career – nearly
twenty-five years now – and it’s the same question that fans were asking themselves
throughout their headline slot at All Points East last Friday.
The band are bona fide legends now, no doubt about it, and have a particularly deep link to
London, too. It was here that much of the initial hysteria surrounding their early years began,
and their performances in the city since then have always felt as if they might have the
potential to be a moment. Once they were announced as headlining All Points East this
year, the festival wasted no time in harking back to those heady early days, and constructed
a bill that could have easily existed in a New York club in the noughties – The Strokes, The
Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Walkmen, all present and correct.
"...battling through a sudden downpour, the band’s singer Amy Taylor manages to coax the crowd out from under their umbrellas and into more than one moshpit, with a ferocious and joyful display of punk."
Further down the bill, newer and more left-field acts dominated, with platforms given to some
genuinely excellent live acts. The much-hyped Picture Parlour draw an impressive crowd for
an early slot, and Angel Olsen’s operatic early-evening set showcases a phenomenal
dynamic range, somehow making the main stage feel intimate. The standouts, though, are
undoubtedly Amyl and the Sniffers; battling through a sudden downpour, the band’s singer
Amy Taylor manages to coax the crowd out from under their umbrellas and into more than
one moshpit, with a ferocious and joyful display of punk.
As the evening draws on, there are really only two acts on the crowd’s mind – the indie
double-bill of The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and The Strokes. The former are first, headlining the
West Stage, and waste no time in reminding the crowd of the power of their synth-tinged
rock. Early hits like Y Control sit next to cuts from last year’s Cool It Down with ease, and
prompt the first proper singalong moments of the festival. The band are still somehow
managing to feel like a vision of the future of guitar music, even twenty years on.
Nearing The Strokes’ set-time, the crowd begins to dissipate towards the other end of the
site, and with the sun having set, a ripple of anticipation courses through Victoria Park. The
band walk on to feverish anticipation, and immediately launch into deep cut What Ever
Happened?, amidst a backdrop of 80s graphics.
But this immediately wrong-foots the crowd, and not just by niche setlist decisions. The
sound is frustratingly quiet – even in anthemic moments, nearby conversations are painfully
audible, and at moments it feels like listening to a band miles away, rather than one on a
stage right in front of us. The festival, and The Strokes in particular, have form here – the
same complaint was made when they last headlined, back in 2019 – which compounds
things, a sinking feeling of ‘here we go again’.
provoke flying pints, but it always feels like the show is lingering at about three quarters of
the energy that it ought to be at. At one point the crowd begins chanting at the stage to “turn
it up!” – although to be fair, if the band are unaware of the issues, they may well take it as a
compliment.
A criticism often made of The Strokes in their late-career phase is that they’re a band going
through the motions – The Strokes Limited, in it for the payday. That’s a conclusion that I
don’t entirely buy, and there are flashes here of them enjoying themselves. Certainly, the
newer material is a shot in the arm for the set, and is responsible for some of the more
interesting moments. But then they get sidetracked into a baggy, five-minute impromptu jam,
and lose the crowd all over again.
Ultimately, their tracks will always stand up to inspection, and always draw a formidable
audience – an album like Is This It will have staying power, no matter what. But walking
away from the festival, it’s hard not to feel that it just didn’t hit the mark – was that really it?
Louis Griffin
Edited by Tabitha Smith
Featured Image courtesy of All Points East via Facebook
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