Future Present Past - EP

Fun, flip, but unfailingly on point, Future finds The Strokes as they’ve always been. The New York band’s sound remains a beguiling pastiche of '70s rock, post-punk, New Wave, and beyond, blended together so smoothly that it’s hard to tell what came from where—from the strange, Bowie-esque disco visions of “Drag Queen” to the comparatively straightforward “Threat of Joy,” which, more than anything, just sounds like the Strokes. But the highlight is “OBLIVIUS,” where singer Julian Casablancas soars into a chorus that seems to stand outside time entirely. Has any title—with its sly suggestion that the future came first and the past is where we’re at now—ever summed up a band better?