NEW YORK — The Strokes and Jay-Z will headline the 2010 Isle of Wight festival in the U.K., marking the New York rock band’s first confirmed live gig since October 2006. The Strokes will headline the festival on June 12.
According to Strokes frontman Julian Casablancas, the band is slated to get back together in January after spending five months earlier this year working “on a bunch of songs” for the group’s fourth album — and first since 2006’s “First Impressions of Earth.” Casablancas says that how much material exists is “arguable” but that the group members’ various solo projects have made their working relationship easier.
“When we meet with the band and talk and play music, it’s just a different level of ease and comfort,” he says. “Everyone’s more easygoing and everyone feels more confident and just trusts each other a little bit. I think we’ve subtly been feeling urgent about (making a new album), but I don’t want to predict anymore, because every time I make predictions I’m wrong. So I would just leave that alone right now.”
Casablancas recently released his solo debut, “Phrazes For the Young,” and is in the midst of brief tour with his 10-piece band. Throughout November, Casablancas did a Friday night residency at the Broadway Palace Theatre in L.A. and a nine-date European tour kicks off Monday in Copenhagen.
Casablancas told Billboard.com that some of the eight songs on “Phrazes…” were first offered to the Strokes, but rather than push them on his disinterested bandmates he opted to take them on himself. “I’ve been kind of relinquishing (control) in the band, anyway,” Casablancas says. “In the band what we’re trying to do is be more of a collaboration.”
No other Strokes shows have yet been announced, but other summer 2010 festival appearances in Europe and North America are likely.
