Decoding The Strokes ‘At The Door’: Julian Casablancas’ 2020 lyrical masterpiece
Remember in 2020, when people were saying that everything brought on by the pandemic was just ‘the way the world is now’? That, thankfully, wasn’t quite true, which is no doubt something to be grateful for, and maybe one of the only things to feel grateful for from such a strange, uneasy period in recent history. Well, that and The New Abnormal by The Strokes.
The first since the band’s underrated 2013 gem Comedown Machine (‘Call It Fate, Call It Karma’, ‘Chances’, and ‘Welcome to Japan’ are indisputably some of their best songs ever), The New Abnormal was actually years in the making, a preemptive exploration of the time that would come to define both a world in lockdown and The Strokes’ newest musical venture.
Although writing sessions began as early as 2016, The New Abnormal became an eerie reflection of the times, with songs that explore themes of rapid change, nostalgia, and attempting to find yourself when all is lost – a chaos also mirrored in the album artwork, which sports Bird on Money by Jean-Michel Basquiat, his tribute to jazz maestro Charlie Parker, capturing the tension between commercial entrapment and artistic freedom.
As such, songs like ‘The Adults are Talking’ anchor frustrations with existing in a world where sociopolitics often feels rife with immaturity, ‘Selfless’ captures the desperation of holding onto someone so as not to be alone, ‘Why Are Sundays So Depressing’ looks into the inexplicable malaise with seeing others having it all figured out, and ‘Ode To The Mets’ tackles devotion that always comes with diminishing returns.
‘At The Door’ stands out as a darker, synth-heavy ballad that immediately taps into the raw melancholia of the time in which it was released, starting with the one phrase most of us would pin to such an isolating experience: “I can’t escape it, I’m never gonna make it out of this in time.”
Led entirely by the synth beat without any percussionist presence, ‘At The Door’ is the album’s central masterpiece, providing the pinnacle of Julian Casablancas’ lyrical prowess with phrases that seem straightforward but hold a whole world of meaning.
Conceptually, the song explores the gut-wrenching experience of losing hope and feeling trapped, but transforming that alienation into some kind of resolve, in turn preventing others from the same fate. For instance, Casablancas alludes to suffering a loss (“Have I lost it all?”, “Holding out the night / Lonely after light / You begged me not to go”). Then, he reaches out, offering respite for others going through the same thing: “Use me like an oar / And get yourself to shore”.
This sense of not being able to reach something you desperately want to return to carries throughout the song, with Casablancas’ pained delivery reaching new heights when the bridge kicks in and he alludes to his inherent powerlessness in the grand scheme, “Hard to fight what I can’t see / Not tryna build no dynasty / I can’t see beyond this wall / But we lost this game / So many times before.”
The best part – when it all comes together – is the final section where Casablancas brings the song to a sombre close with words you can only hear properly if you’re paying attention: “Lying on the cold floor / I’ll be waiting / I’ll be waiting from the other side / Waiting for the tide to rise.”
The entire record hits a nerve few bands have managed to hit before or since, but ‘At The Door’ cuts somewhere deeper, giving space to inevitability in ways that feel intense, but cathartic at the same time. The pandemic was a scary time for a lot of people, for similar reasons to why many of today’s issues cause a similar sense of claustrophobia, but when we have music to soundtrack those anxieties, and words that capture everything with so little effort, it feels a little easier to let those moments pass us by.
