July 24, 2026 marked the day that The Strokes released their seventh studio album, Reality Awaits. Produced by Rick Rubin, it is the first album by The Strokes in six years. Since its release, the album has gained a lot of traction on the internet, but after a careful listen, I am of the belief that Reality Awaits was not produced for radio hits, and it definitely wasn’t made to create the next trending TikTok song like “Adults Are Talking” off The New Abnormal in 2020. It was made as a homage to art and its purpose: to make us think, to confuse some, and comfort others. The Strokes are calling, and they want us to start forming our own opinions again.
To understand why Reality Awaits doesn’t care about your opinion, it is first important to understand the background of The Strokes. Originally formed sometime in 1998 by childhood friends Julian Casablancas and bassist Nikolai Fraiture, the five original members, also including Albert Hammond Jr., Fabrizio Moretti and Nick Valensi re-defined modern rock music with their 2001 debut album Is This It. Since then, The Strokes have been through breakups, solo careers, reunions and many world tours. Through every reunion, they have remained together with the original five; no subtractions or substitutions.
In 2022, a documentary titled Meet Me In The Bathroom, directed by Will Lovelace and Dylan Southern was created, doing an incredible job covering the music scene and political attitude in New York City in the early 2000s. The documentary contains early footage of The Strokes, before they were selling out stadiums, as well as many other iconic bands that also shaped the era, like Yeah Yeah Yeahs and The Moldy Peaches. I like to believe that a part of my soul lives in that footage; inside a hot sweaty basement venue underneath a Brooklyn bar with flip phones, conversations with strangers turned friends and no outlet to document debauchery. The modern world is missing this, and Reality Awaits is reminding us.
From the first point of listen, much of Reality Awaits sounds like The Strokes, with tracks like “Dine N’Dash” and “Going to Babble On” featuring their iconic lo-fi guitar sound. However, the elephant in the room must be addressed: The autotune. After seeing the band perform live on their 2026 Reality Awaits North American Tour, I am here to announce that Casablancas can most definitely still sing, and the rest of the band can most definitely still jam the way they always have. So in this instance, we are left with a theory; the autotune is satirical. Reality Awaits is perhaps calling out the ability of autotune, modern technology and what it does to not only our music, but our world as a whole.
“Psycho Shit” is the first track on the album. The lyrics are broken and vulnerable, and lead the way to one of the album’s major themes and songs, “Falling out of Love.”
“Like poisoned wine, your eyes are mine / past the hall of judging dead / into the bed of nightly dread”
As lyrics in music go, the beautiful thing about them is that they are to be interpreted by the listener. “Psycho Shit” could be a love song, about two people, deep into a relationship with each other that is inevitably doomed. On the contrary, the lyrics could be applied to the relationship between a human being, and an iPhone equipped with social media.
In 2026, The Strokes are who they are, and have already established themselves (whether intended or not) as iconic rock n’ roll influences. With Reality Awaits being the first album from The Strokes in six years, there is room for controversy, especially considering how much our world has changed since 2020, because of the media. In “Going To Babble On,” Casablancas sings,
“Forget the things that they did, yeah / Obey the words that they say, yeah / Get it on my desk on time, yeah / Got plans, I’m going online”
A critique of human nature in 2025, the lyrics relate directly to what’s happening in the United States in the 2020s: The beginning of the fall of democracy. As journalists and as citizens, we are actively living through it, watching it crumble before our eyes — one oblivious, desensitized 30-second video on our phones at a time.
Despite Reality Awaits having the ability to be interpreted as a deeply political album, it is dually an album surrounding themes about the complications of love. Circling back to “Falling out of Love,” its themes of holding onto the pieces of something already broken are repeated in the final track “Tyrants of the Mellow Moon.”
“Here we are for the final time / And I hope you say that I made you laugh / Oh I tried to make things right / Though it’s hard maybe I can for just one night”
At the end of the day, Reality Awaits is like The Strokes’ rebellious child. It doesn’t care if you are not a fan of Casablancas’ robot autotune voice. It is unafraid to challenge what fans want to hear, and unafraid to be controversial, and vulnerable.
Catch The Strokes on tour here.
Keep up with The Strokes:
Spotify / Apple Music / Instagram / TikTok / YouTube / Website
