The Strokes just released their first album since accepting a Grammy over Zoom, and King Julian has abdicated his indie rock throne to become a vagabond space cowboy. If The New Abnormal was making diamonds from pressure, Reality Awaits is riding a horse opposite the mines. I love it.
Julian Casablancas has long been established as the coolest man in rock since arriving on the scene in 2001. I think he may be happier now after finally establishing himself as one of the genre’s strangest. This record isn’t 17 nonsensical experimental minutes of noise pollution like The Velvet Underground’s “Sister Ray” (I like that song), but I would be remiss in believing these songs didn’t make Lou Reed’s ghost just a little prouder.
This release marks the most successful reconciliation of The Strokes’ melodic prowess with the devil on Casablancas’ shoulder that commands his hands towards the autotune machine. Though songs like “Oblivius” and “Call It Fate, Call It Karma” prove this quintet to be no stranger to vocal alteration, the band has never given Julian the go-ahead to disrupt quite like this. And despite polarizing fans with the novel creative direction, The Strokes took this green light to play looser and grimier and structurally unsounder than in decades prior.
Reality Awaits sounds as absurd, unnerving, and oddly energizing as the modern age in which it arrives.
I think of the Space Cowboy gracing the album artwork. I think of his new Wild West, one of artificial intelligence and unregulated betting markets and government-mandated misinformation.
Perhaps the key to understanding it all, I think of The Voidz deep cut “Think Before You Drink” from their album Virtue. A rare cover from Casablancas, the track signals his first attempt at electro-country-indie alchemy. Drowned in pitch correction and vocal filters, Casablancas croons the words of Michael Cassidy’s decades-old track, deliberately granting new meaning to the enduring universal nature of the song’s message. It plays like a folk song from the year 2050.
Julian laments the dangers of numbing comfort and the decline of critical thought.
“So before the final slaughter, Please stop and think.
You can lead a horse to water, But you cannot make him drink”
Though perhaps a bit early to the party, this idea serves as the thesis for this new Strokes record, right down to the horse! At its core, Reality Awaits is a warning and a wake-up call to the absurd new frontier of class warfare and authoritarianism.
“Psycho Shit” and “Dine N Dash” introduce an uncharacteristic but socially relevant dark sonic approach for the band, drawing a line in the sand to say this is not The Strokes of old. Despite these efforts, the subsequent three tracks veer towards normalcy.
“Lonely In The Future” explores the band’s quarter-century in the cultural spotlight in the iconic ii-V-I-IV chord progression featured in all of Casablancas’ greatest hits. (It also explores my top 10 list of favorite songs in their discography)
“Falling Out Of Love” embraces autotune with full force and lyrically blends the ridiculous with the sincere. Though a product of their new sound, The Strokes still find enough familiarity to bite nostalgia and heartbreak in their classic form.
“Going To Babble On” does a delightfully bouncy and bubbly job pairing Julian’s catchiest hooks with Nick’s finest guitar work. “Forget the things that they did, yeah, Obey the words that they say, yeah” rings true as The Strokes stray further from their intended instrumental shift and instead find themselves in Babylon, overindulging in the comfort of their traditional and commercially viable sound.
Thus, we reach the nexus point of this sonic meta-commentary in “Going Shopping.”
“Solidarity can be difficult, when you’ve got cool stuff to lose”
A tongue-in-cheek consumerist anthem, this track finally verbalizes the struggle to revolt and produce real change. And as the music video suggests, it’s a sort of brain-rot Trojan horse for the conversation. The band dabbles in satire and silly imagery, playfully confronting their own inability to ever truly detach from a material reality.
“Liar’s Remorse” marks a stark tonal shift and fully realizes the vision of “Think Before You Drink.” Drummer Fabrizio Moretti takes a breather to highlight an intimate (and somehow still catchy) stream of consciousness that directly calls attention to AI technology and its desensitizing emotional implications. “I waste my days away instead of giving it a voice.” This song is the elusive futuristic folk ballad Julian has been waiting to release.
“The Fruits of Conquest” and “Tyrants of the Mellow Moon” round out the three-track run. This final act blends influences from alternative rock to Caribbean reggae, and packs the strangest punch. From randomly shouting “harmonic minor” in a similar vein to John Lennon’s “cookie” interjection on “Hold On,” to the haunting repetition of “I’m a leech.” This home stretch of Reality Awaits shares an affinity for the artfully weird akin to that of Best Picture victor Everything Everywhere All at Once, as both make peace with a decade defined by COVID and AI and Trump 2.0.
The Strokes did not particularly reincarnate Woody Guthrie and save the universe. But perhaps they did deliver the folk album we deserve in 2026.
The current presidential administration has violently rejected democracy, pulled the guardrails on any hope for an environmentally conscious future, weaponized tariffs to siphon working-class money into corporations, launched a war slash energy crisis on a whim, and more and more and more that I can’t think of because it's so distractingly deplorable by design. All done under the nose of a populace voluntarily outsourcing brain function and critical thought to the technocrat overlords.
So forgive Mr. Casablancas if it takes obscene levels of autotune to make people realize they kind of hate computers. I get it, and I think it sounds sick as hell.
Respect the new sound, let Julian strap a jet pack to a cowboy and let him ride.
This Autotune Kills Fascists.