The indie rock band’s Tuesday night show at TD Garden marked its first Boston appearance in nearly two decades.
By Darin Zullo
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Indie rock band The Strokes returned to Boston Tuesday night for the first time in nearly 20 years. Lead singer Julian Casablancas’ quippy, sarcastic style was in full force as he reacquainted himself with the city.
“Haven’t been to Boston in a long time. It’s good to be here,” Casablancas said. “Great memories sleeping on people’s couches, sleeping with people’s girlfriends … just kidding.”
Onstage at TD Garden, Casablancas tried on all sorts of hats to reconnect with a changed city. These ranged from an ill-advised ramble about organized religion to shoutouts for the Celtics and Red Sox, an unexpected move for a quintessentially New York band.
The Strokes are on tour to promote “Reality Awaits,” the band’s upcoming seventh studio album set to be released in July. It’s the first tour the band has embarked on without a founding member due to guitarist Nick Valensi taking a “temporary break,” but thankfully, the chemistry for a good show was still there.
Ultimately, Casablancas found that the clearest path to the Boston crowd’s heart was the music. The Strokes’ highly-anticipated set kicked off with “Ize of the World,” the same track which opened its last Boston show in September 2006.
At the time, the band was touring to promote “First Impressions of Earth,” its third studio album. This record was the last to cling to the garage rock revival aesthetic which shaped the band’s massively influential debut, 2001’s “Is This It.”
Since then, the Strokes’ sound has evolved to incorporate elements of 80s new wave and synth-pop. Tuesday night marked the first time that songs in these new styles, such as “One Way Trigger” and “Life is Simple in the Moonlight,” were played live for a Boston audience.
After later albums like “Angles” and “Comedown Machine” garnered mixed reviews, the band’s most recent record, “The New Abnormal,” was widely considered a return to form and won a Grammy Award for Best Rock Album. However, its April 2020 release meant that efforts to promote it through touring were kneecapped by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Strokes were set to return to the city for a headlining set at Boston Calling 2022, but they dropped out last minute after a band member tested positive for COVID. Despite these setbacks, “The New Abnormal” revitalized the band’s popularity and earned them a new generation of fans.
Tuesday’s show attracted a wide audience from both generations, and tracks like the low-key “The Adults are Talking” and the anthemic “Ode to the Mets” were met with just as much excitement as early-days classics like “Someday” and “Hard to Explain.”
The band also showed off “Going Shopping” and “Falling Out of Love,” two new singles which have divided both fans and critics over Casablancas’ heavy use of AutoTune. While the former fared well in Tuesday’s set, the latter felt especially clunky for being played right after the aggressive and tightly-written “Take It or Leave It.”
Despite that brief letdown, The Strokes never again lost their energy once they picked it back up. Casablancas, who had by then settled in with the Boston crowd’s vibes, certainly seemed to be feeling unstoppable.
“We wear you guys out yet?” he joked. “This is gonna be an arena-rock four-hour setlist, so buckle up!”
Casablancas laughed his way through “Last Nite,” the band’s most popular track, before closing the main set with a song so fiery that he needed only to whisper its name to hear the roar of the crowd: “Reptilia.” By contrast, the encore led with mellower favorites, including “Selfless” and “Call It Fate, Call It Karma.”
The band turned back to its original sound one last time for show closer “What Ever Happened?” To say goodnight, Casablancas threw his mic stand aside, calling back to a decades-old act of aggression.
The Strokes’ “opening majestic artistes,” as Casablancas called them, were singer and bassist Thundercat and singer-songwriter Hamilton Leithauser. Thundercat, also known for his work with rapper Kendrick Lamar, unleashed a funky wave of weaving bass playing that gave the Boston crowd a taste of something different.
Leithauser, whose band The Walkmen is cut from the same cloth as the Strokes, knew how to grab the crowd’s attention (shouting out the New York Knicks) and soak up that energy through his own brand of rock. He later joined the Strokes on the stage during the encore, taking Casablancas’ place for a cover of The Walkmen’s “Heaven.”
Setlist for The Strokes at TD Garden, June 23, 2026
- Ize of the World
- Killing Lies
- Hard to Explain
- Going Shopping
- Juicebox
- Someday
- Heart in a Cage
- Ode to the Mets
- Bad Decisions
- Take It or Leave It
- Falling Out of Love
- One Way Trigger
- Life is Simple in the Moonlight (with unreleased intro)
- You Only Live Once
- Gratisfaction
- The Adults are Talking
- Last Nite
- Reptilia
Encore
- Selfless
- Happy Ending
- Call It Fate, Call It Karma
- Heaven (The Walkmen cover, with Hamilton Leithauser)
- What Ever Happened?
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