Let me start by saying that I've been a fan of The Strokes since their debut Is This It? At one point in my life, I would have called them my favorite band. But a lot has changed in the 25 years since the New York rockers debuted. So much so that I have recently questioned if they are still a “good” band.

Before we dive into that hot take let’s go back in time to set the scene on what made The Strokes the biggest group on the planet.

Butt rockers and a garage rock revival

The year was 2001. Pre-9/11 rock was dull. Butt rockers — think hard rockers like Three Days Grace, Puddle of Mud, Anberlin or Shinedown — were ruling the charts. It was not a good time to be a fan of rock music. But that was all about to change.

The Strokes brought on a garage rock revival pretty much overnight with the release of their debut Is This It? in October 2001. The album simultaneously introduced the world to The Strokes and proved that rock could sound important and be "cool" again, in the process relegating butt rockers to hard rock stations. The Strokes, along with The White Stripes (who were technically already on the scene with their 1999 self-titled debut), ushered in a whole explosion of garage rock bands, including the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Hives and Interpol.

It's not an understatement to say that their early influence in the revival of rock more or less cemented The Strokes as one of the most important bands of the last 25 years. As evidence, consider this: Less than a year after their debut release, The Strokes had one of the biggest label bidding wars of all time. It's crazy to think that the music industry would risk it all on a group crafting lo-fi garage rock when the biggest song of 2001 was "Hanging by a Moment" by Lifehouse!

The Strokes stayed strong with their follow-up 2003 record Room on Fire, which had the excellent tracks “Reptillia,” “12:51,” and “Meet Me in The Bathroom.” “Reptillia” even went on to get tons of love in Guitar Hero, and has more or less become a classic 2000s rock track.

After Room on Fire came what I would call the last great Strokes album, First Impressions of Earth. It's a very solid rock record that gave the world “You Only Live Once,” “Juicebox,” and “Heart in a Cage.” It proved that three albums in the band still had it, and they were still worth caring about.

To this point, the band had released several great songs and no real lemons in their three albums, seemingly proving they had staying power. But what happened next made me question everything about my love for The Strokes.

Enter the weirdness

Let's face it: Bands need to evolve. If they don’t they just keep making the same music or end up breaking up. Some groups have done this better than others. Radiohead immediately comes to mind as a master of evolution. You can say the same with Bjork, The Beatles, The Smashing Pumpkins and even newer bands like Fontaines D.C.

Unfortunately, The Strokes are not good at reinvention.

After a hiatus and breakup rumors The Strokes returned with 2011's Angles, which was an attempt to go '80s. Unfortunately, they produced a mediocre album that was delivered to a fanbase with incredibly high expectations. I’ve listened to this record many times since its release, giving it chance after chance to grow on me, and I still don’t like it. It ultimately was a sidestep from their established sound and it just didn’t work. Take lead single “Under Cover of Darkness.” Sure, it sounds like The Strokes enough, but it's lackluster and has an almost purposefully bad guitar solo. It felt phoned in.

Next up was 2013's Comedown Machine, which was another misstep. However, unlike Angles and its halfhearted attempts, with Comedown Machine the band tries a lot of different things. That's not necessarily bad, but on this album it came off as unfocused and felt like a band still struggling to gel back together. Age has been a little kinder to Comedown Machine though. Most fans now consider it an experimentation album from the band. Listen to album closer “Call It Fate, Call It Karma” and you'll hear The Strokes at arguably their most outside-the-box sound.

Return to form

2020 was a weird year for just about everyone. What was not on the bingo card for that year was a Strokes comeback album. The New Abnormal was a welcome surprise from The Strokes — and it only took seven years to get it!

The record offered a fresher sound while staying true to The Strokes' original vibe. Tracks like “The Adults are Talking” and “Bad Decisions” (even though that one sounds a bit like Modern English’s “I Melt with You”) are easily some of the best tracks the band has ever done — they're right up there with the classics. The album proved the band still had gas in the tank, and for fans it was like returning to the glory days of Is This It?

The New Abnormal got me back on board with The Strokes, even though I'd also had several weird and disappointing moments with the band in real life, if you'll let me elaborate.

The Strokes' live shows

I attended Bonnaroo in 2011, and what band was I most excited to see? The Strokes. But the set was a real letdown. The band played a disappointgly short set: they showed up 15-20 minutes late and finished earlier than their scheduled end time! The worst thing though was that Julien Casablancas seemed more excited to have film director John Waters watching from the side of the stage than to be performing for a massive audience. They also sounded meh.

Fast forward to 2019 and now I’m side stage watching The Strokes in Lima, Peru of all places! Once again the band sounded meh, and this time Casablancas kept forgetting the words to several songs. Having seen a bad show in 2011, and with the band in the midst of their albums four and five failures I shrugged it off, let go of The Strokes, and moved on with my life.

Skip to 2023 and I’m taking photos of The Red Hot Chili Peppers concert in Minneapolis with — you guessed it! The Strokes as the opening band. This time I was prepared for whatever they offered, which again wasn’t much. I had to shoot their set from one side of the photo pit without moving (an odd requirement that has thankfully not happened again). Openers have a lot of pressure on them getting the crowd ready for the main act. Did The Strokes get me pumped up for The Red Hot Chili Peppers? No. They made me feel weird. It was another lackluster performance that hadn't evolved much at all in over 10 years.

The Strokes are not a good live band. I’m sure some people will disagree, but I'm okay saying that — I've seen them three times and each show was underwhelming.

"Going Shopping" and the future

Now it’s 2026 and The Strokes have released their latest single “Going Shopping,” off their unreleased seventh album Reality Awaits. We're currently playing this track in heavy rotation here at Studio One.

Do I personally like it? No. In my opinion it’s a step back for the band, harkening to the days of Angles and Comedown Machine. Why the auto-tune? Why the almost AI looking single cover? Are they trying to take advantage of the Millennial music nostalgia that's driven a 2000s rock and punk revival? It makes me worry that yet again the band is phoning it in.

But, weird new single or no, people love The Strokes, and (yet again) anticipation for this new record is high. So, like other disappointed but still supportive fans, I have hope that the album will be good. Plus, there's at least one hopeful sign that the band has evolved in a good way and there's more to enjoy on their forthcoming album.

The Strokes played this year's Coachella to a huge crowd, where they took a rare political stance and played video footage denouncing decades of U.S imperialism. This was a pretty ballsy move for a band that has long avoided any commentary on current events, and in my opinion it worked in The Strokes' favor. Unlike the shows I've seen live, this show did not seemed phoned in, but rather a genuine portrayal of frustration with the United States — and they did it at Coachella, of all places! Pretty badass and a welcome change for The Strokes.

That doesn't answer my question though: Are The Strokes still a good band?

I want to say yes, but "it's hard to explain."

2026 marks 30 years of high energy scream-a-longs that have echoed far from the Massachusetts basement clubs where Dropkick Murphys got their start. Fife, drums and bagpipes bring the band’s Celtic roots to life in songs like “Johnny I Hardly Knew Ya” and “Who’ll Stand With Us?” I can only imagine how many Boston bars closed for the night to the strains of “Kiss Me I’m $!@’faced” and, thanks its use in Martin Scorsese’s film The Departed, “Shipping Up to Boston” has blared from jukeboxes all over America since 2006.

The band has played shows for striking union members, insists all of the official shirts bearing the band’s name are American made … and the band was started on a bet bassist and vocalist Ken Casey made with an old buddy.

I spoke with Casey in advance of the band’s recent show in West Des Moines and began by asking whether he feels nostalgia when looking back at three decades.

Casey:
I hadn't until recently. Then all of a sudden I was like, 'Wow!' I mean, the band started out on a bet. A kid that I worked with — I was bartending and working construction in the day — the kid I bartended with said, ‘You're always threatening to start a band. I dare you to put a band together and open for my band. We have a show in three weeks.’ And here we are 30 years later.

In 2013 Dropkick Murphys played historic Fenway Park during the 2013 World Series. The Boston Red Sox clinched the championship that night, and while Casey was elated, the memories that loom largest are of his kids running the bases at that storied ballpark. Dropkick Murphys are intrinsically tied to Boston: love for The Olde Town is all over the band’s lyrics, the imagery in their music videos and their album artwork. In 2009 Casey founded The Claddagh Fund, supporting community-based nonprofits.

Between family and the childhood friends he made at his all-boys Catholic high school, Casey had both feet planted in Boston at a young age.

Casey:
Boston's a big city, but a small-town vibe. We kind of just embedded ourselves in a way that a lot of bands don't. We were always very concerned about having respect for our hometown because that's our people. That's where we're from.

Earlier this year Dropkick Murphys were one of many artists to leave talent agency Wasserman due to its founder’s ties with Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein.

Casey:
I just feel like you got to put your principles ahead of your career. And there's a lot of people in the world right now that aren't willing to do that, particularly in our government. I feel like doing the right thing creates good karma, you know? And it might make life a little bit more difficult, but hopefully it all comes around.

Brunner:
Recognizing that there's no one ambassador for punk rock, I'm curious about your perspective about its role in 2026. From the bands coming up, established artists and audience response — how, if at all, has it changed to meet the moment?

Casey:
Well, you hit the nail on the head in the sense that it's hard to speak on behalf of punk rock because you have so many different sub-genres and everything. We've always been involved in social and worker solidarity issues. So for us to be the band we are and what we do and what we've done and what we've spoken about for 30 years, we are smack dab in the middle of the division in the country where a lot of people just want to keep their heads down. But we don't consider that an option for us.

If we're going to be true to ourselves, we need to speak up. And I will say right now that this current administration in no way, shape or form represents regular blue-collar people. They represent and do the bidding of the billionaire class. They're bilking the next generation, stealing billions out the back door and using the culture wars to divide us and distract us from paying attention to what they're doing. I'm not everyone, but there's a lot of people I know that voted for Donald Trump because they said that they liked his economic policies. But as we keep going, now they're okay with his people executing American citizens on the street for using their First Amendment to speak up against them.

People seem to be going down the ladder of things they're willing to be okay with, and I do think there's parallels to Nazi Germany in that. What started as supporting someone for something based on promises and economic glory suddenly turned into being willing to essentially be okay with genocide. I say to any Dropkick Murphys fan that is MAGA and supports Donald Trump and say, 'hey man, if you disagree with us and don't like us, just know that we're doing it because we believe in what we're saying.'

I know I can't change everyone's mind, nor do I think I should have the ability to change everyone's mind. But I think what makes Dropkick Murphys important is that we always do what's authentic to us. Authenticity is important, and I think that's why we've been around 30 years.

Brunner:
Considering that we're all exposed to this fire hose of opinion and information every minute, I'm curious about when you need time off. What do you do to mitigate the effects on your mental health?

Casey:
We have our charity foundation, The Claddagh Fund, that focuses on helping a lot of people with substance abuse recovery stuff. We also help children and veterans' causes. At the end of the day, when I'm getting caught up in the rhetoric side of things, I just try to focus back to people helping people, you know what I mean? There's a lot of people that I might disagree with that if I was able to have a cup of coffee with them or whatever, we might be able to bring the rhetoric down and stuff.

I do have to pull back and think about the human side of it a lot, because as much as I need to speak out, I also don't want to add to the division. Sometimes it's hard not to do that because it's stuff you're passionate about, especially when you're being met by someone who's antagonizing. But try to see the human side in all of this as much as we can and just say like, ‘hey, we're all just people trying to get along.’

Brunner:
As I was prepping for our conversation today, I noted that this year marks twenty years since Martin Scorsese’s The Departed. The Dropkick Murphys profile got a nice boost thanks to that film. I’m curious if you ever attempted to reach out to Scorsese to pitch another song. ‘Hey, we got Billy Bragg on this one, Marty. You're going to love it!’

Casey:
You know, we never pitched that one to Marty.

When we were filming the music video for “Shipping up to Boston” we were doing our own B-rate / D-rate version of Departed, a little crime thing running around in Boston. We sent it to Scorsese just to see what he thought and he said, ‘I love it. Why don't you put real movie footage in it?’ He sent our buddy — who was editing the movie in his house — raw footage from The Departed. Most bands that have a song that's in a movie like that, they would have to pay an exorbitant amount of money to be able to make a music video with the film. And he just sent it to us and said, ‘use it as you'd like!’

It was shocking. I mean, our buddy who was the film guy was practically passed out on his floor when he saw a package arrive directly from Martin Scorsese with the footage.

In March, Dropkick Murphys united with Haywire 617 on the split E.P. New England Forever. The band sets out for a summer tour across Europe in June.

This interview has been edited for clarity and readability

Not everyone who has a famous parent is super eager to talk about it, especially with someone they’ve never met, and especially when being interviewed. But Devon Allman, son of Gregg Allman, was happy to bring the subject up himself.

The elder Allman was a founding member of the legendary and groundbreaking Allman Brothers Band, along with his younger brother Duane and others. Gregg Allman passed away in 2017, and Devon Allman has continued to honor his father’s musical legacy with his many bands and projects.

“The band will spin off into a bit of a jam here and there, and elongate some songs, and throw some solos around,” said Allman. “We will still nod to my dad's music and play a song or two because he's not here to do it, you know? And that reminder stings, because it's like, 'man, I wish he was.' And since he isn't, I do feel it's my duty to chuck one in the set every once in a while, and give people that kind of ticket back to their youth, to the nostalgia.”

It’s a statement that could apply to any number of Allman’s projects. He currently leads both the Devon Allman Project and the Allman Betts Band, the latter specifically to carry on the tradition of the Allman Brothers Band. This time though the band Allman is referring to is Devon Allman’s Blues Summit, named after the album Allman released in 2025. They’ll be playing at Hoyt Sherman Place in Des Moines on Tuesday night.

The Blues Summit is a collection of “heavy hitters” of the blues from over the decades, most of whom also appeared on the album of the same name. Jimmy Hall, of the band Wet Willie (who opened for the Allman Brothers many times “back in the day”), will be on hand for lead vocals on several songs. Another major contributor to the record, guitarist Larry McCray, will also be at the Hoyt Sherman show, as will vocalist Laka Soul.

When we spoke, I mentioned to Allman that I thought it was cool the way he was so generous and willing to hand off “the spotlight” of his own record, and tour, to other musicians. But he doesn’t see it that way.

“I guess ultimately it's kind of my gang, but it's not really my record. It's ‘all of our’ record,” said Allman. “We all did some stuff on this. “Jimmy Hall sings three songs — and sings his ass off. You know, he's in his mid-70s. Larry McRae has a song on there that's killer. Larry wrote, I think, four of the cuts with me. So it really takes a village. I would never consider this my record solely. It's definitely a gang record. And I'm really grateful that I got to collaborate with all these great people.”

Between The Blues Summit, The Devon Allman Project and Allman Betts Band, Allman will be on-and-off the road through August, and probably beyond then. If it sounds like he’s overextending himself with the sheer number of bands he’s in, it’s kind of the way he prefers it.

“I think about every two to three years, I just kind of get bored and want to shake it up and want to play with different cats — learn different tricks and change up the scenery,” said Allman “These bands that play together for 20 and 30 and 40 years and do the same songs and stuff, God bless them. I want to create new stuff with new people. So Blues Summit was a way to kind of take the blueprint that we have for the Allman Betts Family Revival, which is a coast-to-coast tour at the end of the year that celebrates our father's catalogs with big names.”

The steady touring, of course, is well in line with how the Allman Brothers Band made its name in the first place (in fact, Devon is a world record-holder when it comes to touring). It also shows how much interest there is in the sound the Allmans created all those years ago. As shown by the success of Tedeschi Trucks Band, Gov’t Mule and even Widespread Panic and others, it’s a sound that simply doesn’t go out of style.

“I think when you're talking about song-based bands like the Allman Brothers, or like the Rolling Stones, or like the Grateful Dead, there's a timelessness and a haunting quality to a lot of those songs,” said Allman. “It's just from the heart, real stories — just honest stuff, and I think that'll always just have a place. I think it's always going to live and breathe because of its honesty, because of its ability to stick with you and haunt you. I mean, there's Stones songs that I hear on the radio that I've heard 5,000 times. I would never, ever reach out and turn the knob down when ‘Gimme Shelter’ comes on. You just don't get sick of songs that move you.”

Tickets are still available for the Devon Allman’s Blues Summit show on Tuesday night, and Devon Allman’s music is available for purchase on his website.