Review: The Strokes at Lytham Festival

The frontman – still lithe, lounge and unpredictable – looks a little unsure, but caves and brings the young woman in question on stage, where he informs her that, rather than duet the song, she’ll be performing alone. “I can guarantee she’ll sing it better than me,” he tells his audience.

There’s a chance that, in another world, the influential New York post-punk revivalists would have parlayed the buzz of early success to become stadium rock staples. Instead, they are one of the touring circuit’s more elusively difficult – yet puckishly gripping – headline acts.

It is incongruous to see them plot only one of two British dates this year in the picturesque north-west, alongside Tears for Fears and Paul Weller, but it is on-brand for their offbeat sensibilities – and a testament to the pull Lytham Festival now has for major stateside acts.

Expanded tentatively to a ten-night event following Covid-19-enforced cancellations in 2020 and 2021, they are one of the new bookings – and with a hot-ticket support bill including Fontaines D.C. and Wet Leg fresh off Glastonbury success, make for arguably the biggest booking in the festival’s history.

Still, an air of apprehension hangs in the air after decidedly mixed opinions to their European festival sets overshadowed their arrival in Lancashire; there is a lingering question over which version of The Strokes might show for their first mainland show outside London since 2011.

But when they arrive - fashionably late by a quarter-hour and battling local curfews – they hit the ground running and don’t look back. Albert Hammond Jr.’s riffs remain as sharp as his cheekbones two decades on from Is This It and music from 2020’s comeback record The New Abnormal - such as the garage crash of Bad Decisions – is received just as rapturously.

They are on shakier ground with inter-song patter – Casablancas leads a self-described Simon Cowell-esque evisceration of their aforementioned crowd guest’s performance that, bar Fabrizio Moretti’s kindlier exhortations, feels unnecessarily savage – but then they race into Reptilia and Someday, and threaten to shake the Lytham windmill to rubble.

They eschew an encore break for more hits; Under Cover of Darkness, Threat of Joy, Juicebox. There is no room for Last Nite; it is fitting their mercurially quicksilver nature would leave their world wanting more.