{"id":435533,"date":"2026-05-19T20:14:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T20:14:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/435533\/"},"modified":"2026-05-19T20:14:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T20:14:08","slug":"the-strokes-albert-hammond-jr-reality-awaits-is-our-best-album","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/435533\/","title":{"rendered":"The Strokes’ Albert Hammond Jr.: ‘Reality Awaits’ Is Our Best Album"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reality Awaits, the first new album from the Strokes in six years, is due out next month. Early singles “Going Shopping<\/a>” and “Falling Out Of Love<\/a>” have set off fiery debates within the fan base, partially because of Julian Casablancas’ choice to sing through Auto-Tune. I don’t object to Auto-Tune any more than I object to distortion pedals, but the new songs have not necessarily bolstered my confidence about Reality Awaits.<\/p>\n

Albert Hammond Jr., however, swears it’s really good. Hammond, the only original guitarist currently touring with the band due to Nick Valensi’s hiatus<\/a>, posted the “Falling Out Of Love” cover art on his Instagram account last week with the caption “F.O.O.L.” (See what Casablancas did there? I had missed the acronym aspect of the song until now.) One commenter wrote, “Albert I know you don’t like it bro you can tell us,” which sparked a vigorous defense of the album from Hammond.<\/p>\n

“it’s my favorite album we’ve ever done,” Hammond wrote. “I can’t express how beautiful it is. I listen to the whole thing and wanna start from the beginning again. It grows and grows and becomes intoxicatingly good.”<\/p>\n

I really hope that’s true, Albert. This summer could really benefit from an intoxicatingly good Strokes album.<\/p>\n

Reality Awaits is out 6\/26 on Cult\/RCA.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Reality Awaits, the first new album from the Strokes in six years, is due out next month. Early…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":435534,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[156,157,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-435533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=435533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435533\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/435534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=435533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=435533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=435533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}