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The Strokes: Reality Awaits review – a perfect marriage of mayhem and melody on their best album in years
The Strokes’ seventh album, Reality Awaits, is praised as one of their strongest releases in years, combining the band’s concise, melodic rock with the stranger, more experimental qualities of Julian Casablancas’ side project, the Voidz. The reviewer argues that this approach gives Casablancas some of his most lively and engaging performances in recent memory, while keeping the songs playful, tuneful and recognisably Strokes-like.
Released six years after 2020’s The New Abnormal, the album follows a record that revisited the group’s early sound but did not signal a permanent return to it. Tracks including Going Shopping, Going to Babble On and The Fruits of Conquest are highlighted for their grooves, melody and renewed energy, although the closing song, Tyrants of the Mellow Moon, is criticised as shapeless and cumbersome. Overall, the review considers the album a successful fusion of mayhem and pop craft.
In short
- The Strokes deliver their best album in years.
- Voidz-style experimentation strengthens the band’s melodic sound.
- One weak closing track slightly mars an otherwise joyful record.
Explained simply
The Strokes are an influential American rock band who emerged in the early 2000s with a sharp, minimalist sound that helped define the era. Led by frontman Julian Casablancas, they have released six previous studio albums, with their last coming in 2020. Reality Awaits is their seventh album and arrives six years later, marking a significant gap in their output.
Over the years, The Strokes' music has shifted between different approaches. In 2020, they returned to the cleaner, more melodic style of their early work, but that record did not signal they would stay in that direction permanently. Casablancas has also pursued his own experimental project called the Voidz, which allows him to explore stranger and more avant-garde territory than The Strokes typically venture into.
The new album is notable for blending these two sides of the frontman's musical identity: it combines The Strokes' characteristic catchy melodies and tight song structures with some of the unpredictable, experimental qualities associated with the Voidz. For a band that has been together for over two decades, this represents an effort to find fresh creative ground whilst remaining recognisably themselves.
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