Six years after the release of The New Abnormal, The Strokes have returned with a new album that’s once again fitting for bizarre times, Reality Awaits (RCA/Cult).
The band’s previous LP, which won a Grammy Award for Best Rock Album, arrived when the world was shut down due to COVID-19. (Its title managed to come off like a timely play on the then-popular phrase ‘The new normal.’) Now things have been turned upside down again, this time on multiple fronts, so what better time for The Strokes to release a new album?
Reality Awaits, like any album (versus a collection of songs best streamed on Spotify), gets better with repeated listens. Upon first hearing the LP, the listener is struck by its usual lyrics, delivered by a heavily autotuned Julian Casablancas. Yet the instrumentation is as solid as ever, and Casablancas’ talent for melody is undeniable, despite the choice to obscure his vocals with effects.
Amid at-times stream-of-consciousness rambling, Casablancas drops sarcastic, self-aware gems like ‘Only my ‘beloved’ songs will define me’ (‘Psycho Shit’) and ‘I’ve been thinking about what I want to say, but I’m an old man now, at least that’s what they tell me anyway’ (‘Going Shopping’). He even uses a song title as an apparent warning (‘Going To Babble On’) and hits a lyrical low point when he starts repeating ‘I'm a leech’ over and over (‘The Fruits Of Conquest’).
But the album has more highs than lows. The melancholic ‘Falling Out Of Love,’ though not as epic, gives The New Abnormal’s ‘At The Door’ a run for its money. ‘Going Shopping,’ the ultra-catchy lead single, is The Strokes at their classic best. What can one do during a time of unrelenting crises? The band offers as good an answer as any in the song’s video: Ham it up in a wacky, politically tinged clip, starring actor Walton Goggins.
