Few, if any, 21st-century rock bands have experienced more tabloid-style scrutiny than The Strokes. Even twenty-five years after the quintet’s seismic debut LP, Is This It, their celebrity—the interview pull-quotes, the questions about their interpersonal dynamics—still seems to overshadow the songs. At some point in the mid-2000s, shortly after they took over the world, being a Strokes fan became exhausting.
So exhausting, in fact, that it’s easy to overlook the rock-solid status of their catalog. When you strip away the external clickbait and listen with fresh ears, their work has been remarkably consistent, maintaining certain sonic signatures (few bands have gotten more mileage out of two overdriven, interlocking guitars) while gently tinkering on the fringes. (By the way, when’s the last time you listened to their 2016 EP, Future Present Past? “Oblivius” might be their most euphoric song.)
But people don’t want “good” from era-defining bands like The Strokes—they want mission statements and musical missives. They also want “Last Nite” over and over. Each project, then, prompts the breathless age-old question: Is this—dare we ask—a return to form? But their seventh album, Reality Awaits, delivers a boring answer to those craving a saucy headline: it’s occasionally bizarre, consistently engaging, briefly random, and often spectacular—and for reasons that have nothing to do with the cultural measuring stick of their early era.
Here, The Strokes work again with Rick Rubin, who produced their slightly slept-on 2020 LP, The New Abnormal. And while these two albums share obvious DNA, Reality Awaits is a far weirder and more challenging listen. There are fewer swoon-worthy hooks—nothing with the starlit poignancy of “At the Door” or the instant-grat post-New-Wave polish of the Billy Idol-channeling “Bad Decisions.” But that’s largely for the better: the lyrics probe more deeply, weaving deadpan humor with surreal observations, while the music swerves into all sorts of jarring detours. A definitive example is lead single “Going Shopping,” wherein Julian Casablancas sings “I wanna be a 7-foot zombie” through gloopy pitch-correction over galloping art-punk guitars.
Speaking of divisive vocal processing—yeah, it’s a whole thing. If it rubbed you the wrong way on “Going Shopping”—or any other time Casablancas has used similar effects over the past decade-plus, like when he was accidentally pitched up to Alvin-like territory on a live version of “Hard to Explain”—you’ll want to prepare yourself. In a couple prominent examples, he slips into a wild, disorienting warble on slow-burn opener “Psycho Shit” and the otherwise crowd-pleasing rocker “Lonely in the Future.” Sometimes the effect feels tacked-on at random, but just when you’re ready to write it off as a distraction, the software blooms into something gorgeously alien, like during the climax of “Future” when the falsetto shoots skyward. (“Certain melodies are benefited by real [singing],” Casablancas told Apple Music in 2024, detailing his approach. “I noticed, years ago, when I started, [some melodies] wouldn’t even be that good. But then somehow Broadway-ing them, Auto-Tuning them, was just like, ‘Whoa, that actually has its own thing.’”)
Reality Awaits thrives within this tension: throwing in unexpected vocal timbres or spoken-word bits (Is that a British accent amid the glowing post-disco pulse of “Dine and Dash”?), harsh track-to-track transitions, and surprising textural changes (the lush guitar-harmony jump-scare and skittering hi-hat patterns that crash the party halfway through the tranquil closer “Tyrants of the Mellow Moon”). When everything feels in balance, the abstractions and melodies and energy all pointing in the same direction, the results are staggering. “Going to Babble On” feels like a post-modern take on “classic” Strokes: Casablancas alternates between distorted mumble and suave croon as the guitars prod and jerk, peaking with another harmonized solo.
The Strokes could probably never satisfy the critics who still salivate over the idea of Is This (Still) It. Kudos to them for resisting the temptation. Even at its most immediate, Reality Awaits forces you to wrestle with it, to untie its pretzeled knots. [Cult/RCA]
Ryan Reed is a writer and editor from Knoxville, Tennessee. In addition to Paste, his work has appeared over the years in Rolling Stone, Revolver, The New York Times, Pitchfork, and many other publications.
