The Strokes - Reality Awaits
I’m not entirely sure what to make of The Strokes’ new album, Reality Awaits. Similar to Charli XCX’s Music, Fashion, Film, the forty-three-minute album feels more like a museum art piece than anything you’d find from a traditional rock band. But unlike Music, Fashion, Film, there doesn’t seem to be any throughline between the songs. When the focus is there on Reality Awaits, it works. When it’s absent, it feels like a meandering jam session as they try to figure out their next move.
The album is the follow-up to their 2020 effort The New Abnormal, and it finds them reunited with producer Rick Rubin. A lot has been said and is still debated about Rubin’s abilities as a producer, yet musicians flock to him as their George Martin, letting them know what does and doesn’t work. In some cases, the results are stunning. In others, it feels like the artist can lose track of the kind of album they’re trying to make, and I feel like that’s what’s happening on Reality Awaits.
There are indeed strong moments: “Lonely in the Future”, the fuzz-indie-rock entry that finds frontman Julian Casablancas speaking about today’s generation, a group of aging rockstars still poised at the top of the mountain and singing with disdain about those who judge others (certain commentators are name-dropped in the song, ranging from political pundits to music critics). “Dine N’Dash” finds him speaking on past love and the passage of time (“We could never afford it/So we dine and dash/I would always go last/No one’s gonna search me tonight/I would give you the easy way out”). “Liar’s Remorse” features an excellent vocal performance from Casablancas (even with the Auto-Tune) as guitarists Albert Hammond Jr. and Nick Valensi provide intricately picked guitar parts to accent each word. “Falling out of Love” continues with the earlier themes of looking back at the past (“I’m in love with a ghost/I’ll be always and never alone/I denied for a while/Falling out of love for the first time”).
With art rock comes risk, and there are times when the avant-garde aspect of the newer Strokes’ songs overstay their welcome. Casablancas tends to use Auto-Tune on a number of songs as an artistic choice. His lyrics veer into the nonsensical on “Going Shopping” (“I wanna be a 7-foot zombie/The pay is low, but I gotta do something/I’m at the mall and the song is bumping/There goes my future wife in the little red jumpsuit”). I don’t need to be spoonfed the metaphors, but I at least want to understand what we’re talking about here. Consumerism? Late-stage capitalism? Is there no meaning and the interpretation is supposed to be in the eye of the beholder? Later tracks like “The Fruits of Conquest” start strong but find the vocalist looping the words “I’m a leech, I’m a leech” while the band jams around him.
The album concludes with “Tyrants of the Mellow Moon”, aggressive Auto-Tune kicking in as Hammond Jr., Valensi, bassist Nikolai Fraiture, and drummer Fabrizio Moretti keep a steady rhythm. By the end of the song, it all sort of collapses in on itself before abruptly coming to a halt.
Despite some good moments, Reality Awaits doesn’t quite hit the target. I admire the leaps that it’s trying to take, but those creative risks find the band bogged down in their own weirdness rather than focusing on the most interesting aspects of said weirdness. Maybe it just isn’t for me. Maybe I don’t know how to recognize art. Who knows?
