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The Strokes Push Past Abnormal on Wildly Engaging, AutoTuned Reality Awaits: Review
The Strokes’ Reality Awaits is presented as a deliberately strange, engaging follow-up to 2020’s The New Abnormal, confirming that the band’s recent creative revival has become a sustained direction rather than a one-off. The review argues that the album moves well beyond the immediate, guitar-led accessibility of earlier Strokes records, embracing unpredictability, unusual vocal processing and abrupt stylistic changes.
Opening tracks “Psycho Shit” and “Dine N’Dash” contain the album’s most extreme moments, including AutoTuned vocals from Julian Casablancas, spoken-word passages and dramatic shifts in mood. Elsewhere, songs such as “Lonely in the Future”, “The Fruits of Conquest” and “Liar’s Remorse” mix danceable grooves, psychedelic details and unexpected endings; the review awards the album a B+.
In short
- Reality Awaits extends The Strokes’ adventurous recent phase.
- AutoTune and abrupt shifts define its unpredictable sound.
- The review rates the album B+.
Explained simply
The Strokes are an American rock band who rose to prominence in the early 2000s for reviving interest in guitar-based rock at a time when the genre was less commercially dominant. They have remained culturally influential over more than two decades.
In 2020, they released The New Abnormal, marking a significant shift away from their signature guitar-driven sound towards more experimental and unconventional production techniques. This represented a notable creative departure from their established identity.
Reality Awaits is their follow-up and signals whether this experimental direction has become their sustained approach or merely represented a temporary creative detour. The album therefore matters as an indicator of the band's future artistic trajectory.