{"id":546804,"date":"2026-07-27T21:10:15","date_gmt":"2026-07-27T21:10:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/546804\/"},"modified":"2026-07-27T21:10:15","modified_gmt":"2026-07-27T21:10:15","slug":"the-strokes-reality-awaits-album-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/546804\/","title":{"rendered":"The Strokes ‘Reality Awaits’ album review"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Twenty-five years after \u201cIs This It,\u201d the Strokes are as big as they\u2019ve ever been \u2014 and not just among old heads eager to relive the wasted glamour of the early-2000s garage rock revival. Go to a Strokes gig these days \u2014 they\u2019re playing arenas and headlining festivals like next month\u2019s Just Like Heaven in Pasadena \u2014 and you\u2019ll find teens and twentysomethings<\/a> in the audience; open up Instagram and there\u2019s frontman Julian Casablancas dispensing viral hot takes<\/a> on the New York City subway. On Spotify, the band\u2019s most-streamed song isn\u2019t the Giuliani-era \u201cLast Nite\u201d but \u201cThe Adults Are Talking,\u201d which came out at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic \u2014 a feat of cultural endurance unmatched by any of the Strokes\u2019 Gen X or millennial peers.<\/p>\n

So what better time to drop a new album full of arcane jokes, baffling vocal affects and light conspiracy theorizing?<\/p>\n

The group\u2019s first LP since 2020\u2019s Grammy-winning \u201cThe New Abnormal<\/a>,\u201d \u201cReality Awaits\u201d is easily the nuttiest entry in the Strokes\u2019 catalog, with a spooky opening track, \u201cPsycho S\u2014,\u201d in which Casablancas, his voice slathered in AutoTune, ushers the listener \u201cpast the hall of judging dead into the bed of nightly dread.\u201d (Sexy!) \u201cFalling Out of Love\u201d is a lilting robo-country ballad about dancing alone under acid rain; \u201cLiar\u2019s Remorse\u201d is a voice-and-guitar lament about submitting to artificial intelligence that Casablancas croons for some reason in a terrible Caribbean accent.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s \u201cLonely in the Future,\u201d in which Casablancas name-drops John Legend and Josh Groban, appears to ding Harry Styles for cribbing the beat from the Strokes\u2019 \u201cHard to Explain\u201d and informs Anthony Fantano, the popular internet music critic, that he \u201cwould not recognize art in any age.\u201d<\/p>\n

Philosophically, \u201cReality Awaits\u201d feels less like a Strokes album than like a Casablancas solo record or an effort by his other band, the Voidz, which he\u2019s used for the last decade or so as a kind of finsta for his harder-edged sociopolitical musings<\/a>. \u201cGoing Shopping,\u201d the LP\u2019s lead single, casts a condescending eye on anyone insufficiently troubled by what the singer views as the creeping tyranny of a super-rich ruling class: \u201cThe worse reality gets, the less you want to hear about it \/ Solidarity can be difficult when you got cool stuff to lose.\u201d That \u201cGoing Shopping\u201d is the album\u2019s jauntiest cut \u2014 with a music video that restages Paul Simon\u2019s \u201cYou Can Call Me Al,\u201d no less \u2014 only sharpens the critique.<\/p>\n

\"\" <\/p>\n

Yet every now and then the Strokes, who absolutely ripped at Coachella in April, lock into a groove with the springy precision that\u2019s been the band\u2019s signature since the beginning. \u201cDine N\u2019 Dash,\u201d \u201cGoing to Babble On,\u201d \u201cLonely in the Future\u201d \u2014 it\u2019s pure pleasure to hear the guitars in these songs slashing away over a rhythm section as crisp and nimble as this one. For all they\u2019ve absorbed from their forbears, the Strokes don\u2019t sound like anybody else, even when they seem to be trying to, as in \u201cThe Fruits of Conquest,\u201d which suggests early Maroon 5 having a go at the Rolling Stones\u2019 \u201cMiss You.\u201d (Obviously, I mean this as a compliment.)<\/p>\n

You can view the indelibility of the Strokes\u2019 style as the reason the band makes so many wacky decisions on \u201cReality Awaits\u201d; looked at differently, the band is taking advantage of its persistent success to spend a bit of creative capital. Either way, Casablancas doesn\u2019t actually seem worried at all in \u201cGoing Shopping\u201d when he voices some anxiety about how long he can continue to matter. \u201cI\u2019ve been thinking about what I want to say,\u201d he sings, \u201cBut I\u2019m an old man now \u2014 at least that\u2019s what they tell me anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Twenty-five years after \u201cIs This It,\u201d the Strokes are as big as they\u2019ve ever been \u2014 and not…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":546805,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[7127,38742,23930,52364,268781,156,268783,3273,268785,268784,157,111,139,268786,69,268782,16513,1243,182423,14047],"class_list":["post-546804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-age","tag-album-review","tag-band","tag-beginning","tag-casablancas","tag-entertainment","tag-first-lp","tag-future","tag-light-conspiracy-theorizing","tag-most-streamed-song","tag-music","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-next-month","tag-nz","tag-reality-awaits","tag-reason","tag-shopping","tag-strokes","tag-way"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546804","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=546804"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546804\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/546805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=546804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=546804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=546804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}