How’s the long-gestating, non-hierarchically structured new Strokes album coming along? We asked Fabrizio Moretti, Strokes drummer (and one-third of the band Little Joy), after he D.J.-ed a set for the new Sunglass Hut flagship store last night. “It’s going well,†he said outside, smoking a Marlboro. “We recorded at Albert [Hammond Jr.]’s studio upstate. We’re, like, inching ever so closer to the fucking finish line, like turtles, but it’s happening.†Moretti said the album will be out “soon,†but he couldn’t promise it’ll be within the year.
There’s even better news: Moretti says that album is turning out “a lot more like the first record.†The first album, he explained, “was made through the course of our youth. And then the second and the third were kind of made within the schedule of just whatever the fuck we were doing at the time. But now, because we’ve had the time to kind of just chill out, we got the chance to just kind of jam it out with each other.†Jamming out, of course, isn’t exactly Julian Casablancas’s style. So how’s everybody been getting along? “There are moments when it’s sandpaper against sandpaper,†he admitted, without getting specific. “There are five different people and five different convictions, but we speak the same language. We always had the kind of gang mentality, but the older we get the more we realize the gang is actually a family. We’re each other’s chosen family, I guess.â€
Moretti, whose exes include Drew Barrymore, confirmed that he’s dating Little Joy bandmate Binki Shapiro. “It’s tough sometimes,†he said. “In music you don’t punch out at the end of the day. You come home when you’re done with your fucking show or recording and you have to work on more music, so bringing work to home or home to work is sometimes stressful, but it has its benefits.†He added: “I tell her that I love her all the time.†Moretti, back with a scruffy beard and disheveled locks after a brief flirtation with a cleaner cut, looked great. In fact, last night his hair was professionally mussed. “I just came from a photo shoot with Elle magazine,†he explained, “so I just let them do it for me.†He said it’s still “a little bit weird†to be in fashion magazines, but the shoot “was really about Binki, and I was just the stooge that stood next to her every once in a while.â€