It’s been 7 years since The Strokes last released a new album—although a new 4-song LP, Future Present Past, did arrive in 2016 to keep the Casablancas-heads at bay. That sounds like it’s about to change this year, though, per an announcement the band busted out on stage during a performance on New Year’s Eve. Affecting a pose of probably-mostly-feigned grumpiness, frontman Julian Casablancas shut down cries from the crowd for the band to play a song from 2011's Angles with an irritated “I don’t remember Angles,” before announcing that a new, as-yet-untitled album will be arriving in 2020.
The band then proceeded to play a “deep cut preview” from the album, a slow-paced, slightly mournful track that Stereogum confirms is titled “Ode To The Mets.” It’s definitely not the most high-energy way to finish out a concert—or a decade, for that matter—but it did seem to make the fans in attendance pretty happy; we’ll presumably hear a lot more from the album over the course of 2020, as the Is This It outfit plans to make multiple festival appearances throughout the year, including a series of Lollapalooza shows in South America.