The Strokes win their first ever Grammy for Best Rock Album

The Strokes have won their first ever Grammy Award for Best Rock Album for their 2020 album LP The New Abnormal.

The record beat out Sturgill Simpson's Sound and Fury, Fontaines D.C.'s A Hero’s Death, Michael Kiwanuka's Kiwanuka and Grace Potter's Daylight for the accolade.

“It’s cutting out, who won?” Nikolai Fraiture asked after the musicians stare at the camera in silence. When premiere ceremony host Jhené Aiko informed them they were the winners, they erupt into cheers.

Speaking to reporters in the virtual press room after their achievement, the Strokes reacted to a question about “the state of rock‘n’roll right now,” Casablancas said:

“I kind of always make fun of rock‘n’roll so I think it’s kind of funny, or cool, or fitting, that we won the award. I think that people that say things are dead, I just feel like their imagination, possibly, has died...Honestly, there’s room for so many genres of music—not necessarily blues rock, please, no more of that.”

The New Abnormal marked the Strokes’ first studio album in roughly seven years, following 2013’s Comedown Machine. In 2016, the group released their Future Present Past EP.

Formed in 1998, the band is composed of lead singer Julian Casablancas, guitarists Nick Valensi and Albert Hammond Jr., bassist Nikolai Fraiture, and drummer Fabrizio Moretti. The New York rock outfit released its debut LP Is This It in October 2001 after signing with RCA Records.

Read the full Hot Press review of The New Abnormal by Pat Carty here, alongside Carty's 2020 interview with Nikolai Fraiture here.

Watch the outfit's hilariously awkward reaction to the delayed news below: