News round up

+ Comedown Machine sold 96, 000 copies worldwide in its first week, this is considerably down from Angles which shifted 177,000 but with no promotion or live dates the band must have expected this

+ Julian is rumoured to be appearing on Daft Punk’s new album, Random Access Memories [via Kobini]

+ Whilst Fab is going to be on Har Mar Superstar’s new record Bye Bye 17 on a track called Prisoner

+ Hottest band of the moment Haim covered I’ll try Anything Once for a recent radio session, Danielle of course was part of Julian’s touring band.

+ Three new t-shirts are now available at the band’s official store

+ Albert attended a Q & A session at a recent screening of Woody Allen’s Bananas, you can find photos here

Gallery Update

Albert and Fab attended the premiere of The Company You Keep on 01 April

Albert attended the premier of Trance on 02 April

Just under  a month until Comedown Machine is released, here is a round-up of the latest news and photos.

Uncut Review

A very short review appears in the new Uncut magazine.

News round-up

The Strokes Trying Your Luck is due to be featured on a compilation CD aiming to raise money for suicide prevention charity CALM. You can find out more about donating to the cause here and read an interview Eric from The Strokes News did with Ben Tallon.

There are now Comedown Machine bundles available on The Strokes official webstore. Note this doesn’t work for people in the UK and Ireland due to Rough Trade being the bands record label, hopefully they will do their own bundles soon.

Gallery Update

Nick played Petty Fest San Francisco last night (27 February)

Nikolai, Fab and Albert were judges at the Garden of Dreams Foundation Talent Show in NYC (27 February)

Further news about the new album and forthcoming single has been trickling in.

As previously reported One Way Trigger may be the first song we have heard but it’s not the first single. Still expected to be All The Time it is due to be sent to radio stations on Feb 13 2013. Long term Strokes supporter and the man who usually gets the exclusive first play of a new single Zane Lowe mentioned in his show tonight that he will be playing it in two weeks time. It’s a little unclear if this will be 12 or 13 February but this will be confirmed nearer the time. He will also interview a member of the band. Zane’s involvement is a bit of a tradition now and he always manages to ramp up the excitement.

More speculation but looking very likely is that the fifth record may well be called Comedown Machine. Over at Reddit someone uncovered this image on the official site. Along with the potential album title is the running length of 37 minutes 49 seconds which seems like a standard Strokes album length (apart from FIOE) [Via The Strokes News]

Lets not forget what we do have right now and that is One Way Trigger. Albert confirmed on Twitter earlier this week that he co-wrote the song with Julian, whilst playing the synths, acoustic guitar and co-writing the lyrics. Albert has been busy. Thanks to everyone who has been contributing to working out the lyrics, Julian has now posted the official ones on his site and I have updated the previous post.

Expect further news and interviews to start happening soon with the band. It seems odd that it was only two years ago we went through this with Angles. I guess I got so used to the long wait between records I didn’t expect a fifth one so soon.

So it seems like there is still no word on The Strokes next album, lots of rumour but nothing solid. Lets hope 2013 brings us what we all want, a new album and a tour.

I’ve updated the gallery with lots of candid photos of the band from late last year and more recently this week

Candid gallery update

2012

Albert at the Killing Them Softly premiere (26 Nov)

Nick & Fab at the Carrera Cocktail Party (06 Dec)

2013

Fab & Kristen Wiig in NYC (07 Jan)

Julian at the ‘Charles Swan III’ screening (09 Jan)

Live gallery update

Nick, Fab and Albert play Petty Fest NY and LA (Oct & Nov 2012)

The second day of the Pearl Jam Festival provided yet more collaborations. I honestly love it when The Strokes perform with other people it always add in an extra element of fun and the guys clearly have a blast.

Julian joined QOTSA on stage during Sick Sick Sick – the song that he performed backing vocals and guitar for back in 2007. QOTSA singer Josh Homme returned the favour and came out for New York City Cops, as well as Eddie Vedder singing on Juicebox again.

Finally Julian (having a busy night) sang backing vocals on Pearl Jam’s Red Mosquito.

Overall sounds like another great night and I’m sure anyone at the concerts this weekend had a blast. I’m so jealous of anyone who went BTW ha

Videos

New York City Cops with Josh Homme

Download: video / audio

Pearl Jam’s Red Mosquito with Julian Casablancas

Download: video / audio

I haven’t found a video for Sick Sick Sick yet but will add it to this post if I do

Photos

Once again thanks to  Jeff Ansari for a lot of  coverage of the weekend

The Strokes at PJ20 on Sunday
Julian on stage with QOTSA 
Live Photos: Summer 2011: Pearl Jam Festival Day Two

Interviews

1.48 into this clip you can see Nick and Albert talk about Pearl Jam, Nick who I think along with Julian is the biggest fan of the band in The Strokes is clearly ecstatic to be playing at the festival