The Strokes have started working on a new album with Rick Rubin.
The ‘Last Nite’ hitmakers are yet to announce plans for their seventh LP – the follow-up to 2020’s ‘The New Abnormal’ – but the legendary producer has revealed they’ve already completed a recording session together in Costa Rica.
Appearing on ‘The Joe Rogan Experience’, he said: “A few months ago I was in Costa Rica, recording a new album with The Strokes, and we rented this house up on the top of a mountain and set the band up outside.
“So they’re playing… It’s like they’re doing a concert for the ocean, on the top of a mountain. It was incredible.
“And we did that every day, playing out in the [open], and they didn’t want to leave. It was, like, the best experience.”
Rubin first teamed up with the band in 2017, when they first started working on ‘The New Abnormal’, which included singles such as ‘Bad Decisions’ and ‘The Adults Are Talking’.
There was a seven-year gap between that and its predecessor ‘Comedown Machine’, but frontman Julian Casablancas admitted he and the band didn’t want to wait that long for their next record.
Speaking in 2020, he said: “I think it will be a little quicker now. I think we have a good thing going. We have a good relationship with Rick [Rubin].
“In theory, knock on wood, we should be working faster. Hard to predict anything but that would be my guess… Albert?”
His bandmate, guitarist Albert Hammond Jr., insisted they’ve never gotten on better than they have now and he he’s excited about their future.
He added: “Yeah, of course – I would want that too. A band is a funny thing. I was just thinking, it’s so positive that you can be together so long and this moment together is even better than before.
“It’s so easy, in time, to lose relationships with people in general. So the fact that you work together and there’s five people going in and out and you can feel better now – it’s just exciting to me.”