By the time I caught up with Nikolai Fraiture at Pearl Jam’s PJ20 Destination Weekend, he looked like a man who’d wandered into the world’s most nostalgic block party and suddenly realized half the guests were his heroes. “We were huge fans,” he says, like that’s not an understatement coming from a guy who used to queue up outside Ticketmaster for Pearl Jam wristbands long before The Strokes were the Strokes. “Me and Julian used to really listen to them a lot.”
The whole Strokes/Pearl Jam crossover wasn’t exactly expected. If you were plotting the Venn diagram in 2001, you had New York garage revivalists wearing 60s and 80s influences on one side and Seattle titans of the 70s/90s rock continuum on the other. The overlap is basically, guitars. But it clicked—first at a festival set, then again in Seattle. “We were backstage talking and said, ‘Oh, it’d be awesome,’” Fraiture remembers. “When he was in Seattle, we decided to do it again.” The “he,” of course, is Eddie Vedder, a man who has never met a stage he didn’t feel like jumping onto.
But the weekend wasn’t just Pearl Jam’s anniversary trip down memory lane. The Strokes were juggling their own milestone: the 10-year anniversary of Is This It. “Oh yeah, I forgot,” Nikolai says, blinking like someone who just remembered an overdue oil change. Are they doing anything special? “No.” Has he revisited the album? “Every day,” he smirks. “No, only if we take a long break to remember parts.”
Still, he admits the early days hit fast when he thinks back—New York clubs, the scrappy energy, and working with producer Gordon Raphael, who helped shape their sound by basically refusing to overthink it. “He put a mic up in a room,” Fraiture says. “We had done all the big producer stuff and it wasn’t working. It was just very natural and organic.”
That natural, organic thing accidentally started an entire scene. The Strokes didn’t mean to become the shorthand for “throwback,” nor did they intend to spawn 10,000 copycat bands who learned the wrong lessons about distortion pedals. Fraiture shrugs off the credit, or blame, depending on your level of cynicism. “I guess,” he says. “There were other bands. It was just the time—ready and cooking—and we were lucky to be part of it.”
While the world was still dissecting Angles—a record born from a famously messy two-year process—the band was already inching toward a follow-up. “We’re trying to get back into the studio as soon as possible,” he says. Not touring much helps. “It’s give or take. We’re not touring so we can really be serious about the album.”
Was it hard to get the machine working again after so many side projects? “Kind of, yeah,” he says. “Redoing something that was supposed to be new… readjusting to something changing—that was the hardest part.” But now? “We found a groove that’s working.”
As for whether the new songs follow Angles or blow it up entirely, Fraiture aims for the latter. “I hope it’s different,” he says. “I’m happy with our fourth album, but I hope we do something different.”
As for the big question of the night: will he be playing any Pearl Jam songs at PJ20? “Only in my head,” he grins.
Perfect. That’s where most of us have been playing Strokes riffs all of this time anyway.
Watch the full interview above and then check out the video below.
