The Strokes Reality Awaits - Worth the Six Year Wait

[Anvil79]

The Strokes have a new album coming on 26 June, their first since The New Abnormal in 2020, produced by Rick Rubin. Two singles out: Going Shopping from April and Falling out of Love from May. Six years between albums is a long time for a band whose legacy is so locked to a specific moment.

The question with any Strokes album is always the same: does it recapture something or does it find something new? Have you heard the singles and what are you expecting?

[Chris81]

Going Shopping is a good song but it does not sound like a band who felt urgency about releasing it. That is either a feature or a bug depending on what you want from The Strokes

[AnthonyCribb]

Rick Rubin producing is interesting because his recent work has been so stripped back. If he applies that approach to The Strokes it could go either way

[FairDos96]

I gave up expecting them to recapture Is This It about four albums ago and started assessing each record on its own terms. That is a much more enjoyable way to follow a band

[CosmicRay17]

Falling out of Love is the better of the two singles. There is something in the middle section that sounds genuinely unexpected

[Delulu]

Julian Casablancas's voice is still one of the most distinctive in rock and it does a lot of work regardless of what the songs are doing around it

[Router48]

Six years of waiting means expectations have had a long time to inflate. Almost nothing could meet what people have built up

[Teal Sparrow]

The New Abnormal aged better than I expected. If Reality Awaits lands in a similar place I would call that a success