The Strokes

The Garage Rock Revival.  In the early oughts, these guys were the face of the new garage rock revival movement, with raw, edgy rock bordering on punk, on 2001's Is This It.  The big hit off of that album was "Last Nite."

Nothing frilly.  Just straight bass, guitar, drums, and growling, distorted vocals.  And yet this stuff shot straight up the charts and became lauded by critics.  Rolling Stone named the album number 2 in its list of top albums of the 2000's.  NME literally named it the top four album of ALL TIME.  So some people get hysterical about their music.  I thought that album was good, but seriously, top four of all time? Come on.

I honestly had not paid attention to the Strokes since that initial album, so I had no idea that they have released another four albums since then.  I just gave the two most recent albums a spin, and it sounds entirely different to me.  Both 2013's Comedown Machine and 2011's Angles are poppy, disco-tinged rock with some flourishes that sound like the Strokes of old, but also get pretty far afield.  Here is "One Way Trigger," the most popular tune from Comedown Machine (~ 6 million spins on Spotify):

Which is, uh, just not quite the same as the old stuff.  The two new albums also have some songs that hew pretty true to the original formula, like "Under Cover of Darkness":

I dig that tune.  I guess the question is who is going to show up at ACL?  The odd, new electro pop rockers, or the old school garage rockers?  Either way, I'd expect that the show would be pretty fun, although I think I'd prefer the latter.