The New Abnormal

The Strokes spent the 2010s drifting apart, putting out records nobody loved, the members barely in the same room. Then they hired producer Rick Rubin, decamped to a studio in Malibu, and made the album that proved they still had it. The New Abnormal is looser and stranger than their early work, full of eighties synths and long song structures, with Julian Casablancas singing higher and more openly than he had in years. It won the Grammy for Best Rock Album, their first ever, twenty years into the band.