The Strokes

Rock band The Strokes recently released fourth studio album, Angles, has debuted at number 4 on the Billboard Top 200 Albums chart. The band sold over 88,000 copies of Angles in its first week. Angles debuted at #3 in the UK, #4 in Canada, and #1 in Australia. The album is about to enter the top 10 on Billboard’s Modern rock chart as well.

Angles has received lots of praise from critics as well, with Rolling Stone magazine calling it “the best album that [The Strokes] have made since 2001’s Is This It” in their 4 star review. Other critics lauded Angles as a welcome reinvention for the band, with NME noting that “‘Angles’ lives up to its name by coming at you from some very obtuse places indeed.” TIME called Angles “a 10 song exercise in rock precision,” and SPIN magazine proclaiming that Angles “reminds you why they were so irresistible in the first place” in their 8 out of 10 review.

 Angles is the band’s first new release since 2006’s First Impressions of Earth and marks the ambition of that album with the immediacy of the band’s earlier albums  Is This It (2001) and Room On Fire (2003).  In 2010, the band returned to the road, playing and headlining major festivals in the United States and UK, including the Isle of Wight Festival, Lollapalooza, Hurricane Festival, Splendour In The Grass, Rockness, Outside Lands, and Austin City Limits. Time Out Chicago hailed the Lollapalooza performance as “the best set I’ve seen since covering Lollapalooza.  Better than Radiohead in 2008.  Better than… who headlined last year? …The crowd…was euphoric