Perhaps still fresh from his birthday three days prior, the 43-year-old Albert Hammond Jr sounded energized on the Zoom call.

“I had really good moments, yeah,” Hammond Jr said on Apr. 12, thanking The Jakarta Post for the birthday wishes. “It was a travel day so I was on tour.”

It was morning in New York where Hammond Jr was, and he took time with his words, pausing and flowing very naturally with his thoughts. He also ordered some food while recalling his time in Indonesia in 2018.

“I remember the [We The Fest] festival. Indonesia was not a place where it was light on the senses. It was beautifully intense, and I can’t wait to go back,” he said, regretting the lack of time to “take it all in” on his first solo trip to the country.

“After playing, I was like, ‘We have to play over there during a tour!’ ’cause it will be the first time we’re doing it, and we’re 20 years in,” he said about his famed New York band, The Strokes, one of the most influential rock bands from the early 2000s.

Many have happened since 2018: After his solo recourse, Hammond Jr returned to the studio with The Strokes, came out with an album in 2020, won their first Grammy award with it, became a father, and now finally putting out his fifth solo record on June 23, aptly titled Melodies On Hiatus.

Asked about whether it referred to songs he created during the COVID-19 hiatus, he surprisingly has only just thought of it.

“It’s kind of funny, I never even looked at [the title] relating to COVID… you see, that’s why I like not saying what stuff means ’cause people come up with things on their own,” he said with a tone of wonder.

But Hammond Jr emphasized that it is “not a Covid album.” With long-time producer Gus Oberg, he had recorded these songs worldwide since 2019—even in rented houses at times.

“I think the solo in ‘100-99’ was done in Paris, the lead guitar intro in ‘Thoughtful Distress’ was in Northern Spain, so we did stuff everywhere, sometimes in hotel rooms,” Hammond shared. “It was recorded during a transition time, too. I kept branching places in L.A. and then I finally moved there.”

With 19 tracks over the board, the album ranges from the sweet guitar licks Hammond Jr is known for to new sounds he was inspired by, like hip-hop in the single “100-99”. But Hammond Jr, a well-known opponent of labels and genre-boxing in music, did not see it as such.

“I didn’t think it was [a hip-hop-oriented track], though I feel like I’ve always liked how drums and guitars were used in certain hip-hop music in the ’90s and how it was sampled,” he simply said.

Shedding the ‘Francis’ alter ego

From the get-go, Melodies On Hiatus presents a fresh sound—with themes less heavy than his previously lauded 2018 album Francis Trouble. He also clarified that his musical alter ego Francis would not appear here.

“I called it ‘deconstructing the songs’ [on other publications], but what I meant is, I normally make demos before anyway, so why don’t I just keep them in that form?” he explained, jotting down inspirations straight to the drum machine on his phone or the ones at home.

“I think it even continued like that with the lyrics ’cause I always say words and stuff that I’m just making up on the spot as I’m figuring out melodies, and I sent them back to Simon [Wilcox],” he said.

Canadian songwriter Simon Wilcox, who had helped write songs by Poppy and Blink-182, was one of the several collaborative efforts in the album. But among fans, the most anticipated feature from the tracklist has been drummer Matt Helders of the British rock band Arctic Monkeys, who share a sizable Venn diagram of fans with the indie rock New Yorkers.

“We just happen to get along! He lives in L.A., and I was doing all these things with drum machines. This song was a leftover one from Francis Trouble that never really found its place, but I liked it and we were just working on it, and we thought it’d be fun to do it, so I just asked him if he wanted to play on something,” he said of the song ‘Thoughtful Distress.’

“I [usually] just text someone and ask for a feature,” he laughed. “Trust me, there’s a lot more ‘no’s than there are ‘yes’s, though, so I don’t know how [this collaboration] happened, maybe Matt was just excited to do it.”

But what has not changed in Melodies On Hiatus is Hammond Jr’s ability to conjure notes and power chords that feel cinematic, an analysis that he also agreed with.

“I’ll do a lot of, ‘You see this microphone? I know it sounds like [expletive], but I wanted to sound like what you think this would sound like or, ‘In that movie when that thing was happening…’” the former film student said.

“I think more than that; when something moves you or inspires you, it ripples into whatever you do, and the outcome doesn’t need to be a song. Creating something is kind of like humor; it’s childlike,” said the newly-turned father, who just had a daughter in 2021.

“A child can seem mysterious and then just start laughing, and then make a joke, but the joke becomes something that’s really deep,” he chuckled.

Fatherhood and sobriety

Another thing that similarly marks Francis Trouble and Melodies On Hiatus, despite their different soundscapes, is perhaps the same subject matter in Hammond Jr’s life: family.

“Having a child definitely changes you,” he said. “I know it’s only been two years, and maybe other people have different experiences, but I feel like creating life is a big deal,” he said of his daughter, who was born in 2021.

“I feel like it destroys everything and breaks everything down, and then you have to re-build it back up, which sounds intense but actually looking at it seems very normal. It feels in line with universal truth, with how things are created in our universe, you know, through destruction. And then you start to understand what a family means, what it is. You get new emotions, you start to feel things in different ways. So yeah, I imagine [fatherhood] affects me a lot,” he ended with a laugh.

But the famed guitarist still needs to see how the subject of fatherhood trickles down into his lyrics.

“There’s a lullaby on ‘Alright Tomorrow’ that I would still have done having not had a kid. I guess the one that kind of references her, before she was born, is the song ‘Libertude’,” he said.

“Although if I say that, it might take someone’s feelings out, which I don’t want to ’cause I feel like sometimes songs are a little more universal than what exactly you’re thinking,” he said, a bit hesitant.

That universality for each song is apparent throughout Hammond Jr’s discography from his first solo record Yours to Keep, leaning toward lyrics that his listeners can put their own meanings into regardless of his initial intent. That also shows in the chorus of “100-99”, with lyrics that might parallel his path to sobriety from drugs in the 2010s. But Hammond Jr’s intention was beyond the topic of being sober.

“Sobriety… has been easy, to be honest,” he said, almost sounding like he was surprised as well. “I’ve had really helpful people around me, but what I mean by easy is as time has gone on, there are things in life that I enjoy that can’t exist with the other things. And so it’s just not a question anymore,” he said.

But he supported that interpretation, encouraging that reading if the listeners relate to it.

“It’s not a straight line to success in anything you do in life, and I don’t know why people assume it is when someone is getting sober,” he said.

Rebirth of The Strokes

Melodies On Hiatus will be Hammond Jr’s first solo album after The Strokes—where he plays the guitar—notably came out with another definitive record, The New Abnormal, in 2020, after their success in the early 2000s. Asked whether he and the band think the album’s success and its Grammy win felt like a rebirth moment, Hammond Jr thought for a while.

“I don’t know if I’d fully put external forces on rebirth [of The Strokes],” he said. “When something is successful in that way, sure, it felt great. It felt better than I thought it would feel. But to me, the thing that reinvigorates the band is always the music. Always has been.”

For the band to still be around decades later was something that he “can’t believe” since he still remembered starting out at 18 with the other bandmates.

“I just feel like it’d be so interesting if I get older with these guys, create music and see how we interact with the audience as we age. That, to me, has become very exciting.”

Going back and forth from The Strokes to his solo ventures turns out to be not that hard for him, who always came up with melodies regardless of where he wants to put it.

“I write too much to have that be a problem,” Hammond Jr laughed. “I guess my mind always takes care of my first love, you know, so whatever The Strokes need from me, I’ll give. But sometimes it doesn’t fit on the record.”

And Melodies On Hiatus itself shows an exhilarating soundscape that differs from the band. Among his short ponderings, laughs, and updates on a new Strokes album (“there’s no further news besides what Rick Rubin had said”) during the call, Hammond Jr felt very proud of his upcoming output.

“This is my favorite record I’ve created, and I think it lives in its world. I feel lucky that I’m able to make a record like this and also be in such a great band.”

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