YESTERDAY turned out to be quite a momentous occasion for fans of New York’s finest garage rockers The Strokes.

What started with mere speculation regarding the possibility of new material culminated in a day which saw us privy to the three brand new tracks which form their forthcoming Future Present Past EP. 

A day that was always going to be pivotal when looked back on in the canon of The Stroke’s history, the question that surely remained pertinent in the band’s mind is whether it would be construed as an all out success or a catastrophic failure in regards to how the tracks would be received.

Well, it turns out that any fears that the band may have had must have been rapidly alleviated as the response has been incredibly positive.

While naysayers would likely see this as those fans that first fell in love with the scruffy haired ruffians that were responsible for their magnum opus Is This It? simply allowing their nostalgia to get the best of them, make no mistake that this is the most prolific that they’ve sounded in almost ten years.

With Angles having had its highlights and those peaks becoming even fewer and far between on 2013’s Comedown Machine, What Future Present Past provides us with is the most confident and genuinely cohesive reunion of The Strokes to date.

One would only need to listen to the first five seconds of opening track OBLIVIUS to hear that the magnificent alchemy that forged the groundbreaking tracks of the past to be once again firing on all cylinders. Featuring an inviting chorus and the kind of madcap guitar work from Nick Valensi that accompanied the finer points of records such as Room On Fire and First Impressions Of Earth, it’s a track that set the wheels in motion for what was to come.

Another notable aspect of this track which must be taken into account is the continued evolution of Julian Casablancas’ vocal style, with the singer become less and less inhibited as his career progresses.

Having crafted a wonderfully eccentric record entitled Tyranny with his side project Julian Casablancas + The Voidz, it appears that this sojourn was precisely what he needed to recharge his creativity and regain the passion for The Strokes. He sounds as though he’s having fun again, a stark contrast to the drab performances which he’d often delivered on more recent records and the apathy which he was known to emit in live performance.

While ‘OBLIVIUS’ may have been Playful and aloof from the outset, ‘Drag Queen’ is a much slower, brooding affair that sees the band make strides towards the spectrum of mid 80’s post punk. With droning guitar throughout the verses, Fab Moretti’s potent drumming soon signifies a leap towards more familiar territory for the band as Julian leads them through a twisted tale of trying ‘to sell your daughter, try to sell your hair.’

Rounding off the EP with the breezy slacker rock that is ‘Threat Of Joy’, this track certainly seems to pay homage to the band’s past; dripping with the cynicism, scrappy guitars and attitude which made Is This It? one of the most enduringly brilliant albums of our time.

If you’d asked most Strokes fans with a grip on reality whether they’d be this optimistic about the band’s future in 2016, the response would be a resounding no. Now, they present themselves as a band that have reclaimed the essence of what made them so special and now once again seem to be on the brink of another revolution.