Watch Fleet Foxes cover The Strokes’ ‘Under Control’ in New York

During their ‘Shore’ tour stop-off in Queens, New York over the weekend, Fleet Foxes performed a cover of The Strokes’ 2003 song ‘Under Control’.

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The band played to roughly 13,000 fans at the Forest Hills Stadium on Saturday (August 13), where they were supported by Nigerian singer-songwriter Uwade. She joined Robin Pecknold and co. for their Strokes cover – as well as three other songs in their career-spanning setlist – which came as part of an “encore” that ran for more a third as long as the rest of the show.

Oddly, too, Fleet Foxes weren’t the only act to cover ‘Under Control’ at show in New York last weekend. Blood Orange covered the song on Friday (August 12) when he played an intimate club show in Brooklyn, and even welcomed out his own supporting vocalist, longtime collaborator Eva Tolkin, to take the mic.

It’s noteworthy, too, that ‘Under Control’ is a relatively obscure choice of Stokes song for both acts to cover in the same city, over the same weekend, with the same vocal setup, at different shows some 10 miles (16 kilometres) apart: the song, which appears on The Strokes’ 2003 album ‘Room On Fire’, was never issued as a single, and certainly isn’t among the band’s most popular songs.

Nevertheless, Fleet Foxes put an enchanting spin on the song, performing it as a 10-piece (with Uwade and four backing vocalists filling out the stage) with a radiant, soulful edge. Have a look at some crowd-shot footage of the cover below, then see the full setlist from Saturday’s show:

Fleet Foxes played:

1. ‘Wading In Waist-High Water’ (with Uwade)
2. ‘Sunblind’
3. ‘Can I Believe You’
4. ‘Ragged Wood’
5. ‘Your Protector’
6. ‘He Doesn’t Know Why’
7. ‘Featherweight’
8. ‘Third Of May / Ōdaigahara’
9. ‘White Winter Hymnal’
10. ‘Phoenix’ (Big Red Machine cover)
11. ‘Mearcstapa’
12. ‘Mykonos’
13. ‘I’m Not My Season’ (Robin Pecknold solo)
14. ‘Blue Spotted Tail’ (Robin Pecknold solo)
15. ‘If You Need To, Keep Time On Me’ (Robin Pecknold solo)
16. ‘The Kiss’ (Jude Sill cover, Robin Pecknold solo)
17. ‘A Long Way Past The Past’
18. ‘Drops In The River’
19. ‘Blue Ridge Mountains’
20. ‘Grown Ocean’
21. ‘Montezuma’ (Robin Pecknold solo)
22. ‘Tiger Mountain Peasant Song’ (Robin Pecknold solo)
23. ‘The Shrine / An Argument’
24. ‘For A Week Or Two’ (with Uwade)
25. ‘Under Control’ (The Strokes cover, with Uwade)
26. ‘Going-To-The-Sun Road’ (with Uwade)
27. ‘Helplessness Blues’

Fleet Foxes are currently on tour in support of their fourth album, ‘Shore’, which arrived – by surprise – in September of 2020. New York’s show marked the last date on the North American leg, with Pecknold and his band set to touch down in the UK later this month. They’ll play six shows in the region – including a headline set at this year’s End Of The Road festival – before continuing the leg with a sextet dates across Europe. See more details here, and find tickets here.

NME gave ‘Shore’ four stars upon release, with Charlotte Krol describing the album as “a balmy and bright look at life in the face of death”. The band followed it up last December with a new live album called ‘A Very Lonely Solstice’, committing to record a livestream concert they played at St. Ann & The Holy Trinity Church in Brooklyn last year.

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