Review: THE STROKES – “Reality Awaits”

Anti-nostalgia operation: The Strokes are back after six years with an album that does not bask in the success of the past but which, they guarantee, is the best in their discography and “grows, grows until it intoxicates you” (Alex Hammond Jr dixit).

First listen: “Reality Awaits” is not a record for nostalgics. If you think you'll find the Strokes from when you went dancing at the Covo or the Locomotiv (I apologize for the very geographically limited references, I spent the clubber phase entirely in Bologna), know that you will be dumbfounded. The Strokes from when we were – we were – the indies posed with the Wayfarer, the beat-up All Stars and the skinnies, spending the evenings reeling off the names of unknown bands that maybe we hadn't even listened to but were really cool to mention, are no longer here. Forget the revival, the re-enactment, the homage to times gone by. The five “saviors of rock” are back, but they have given a new musical look.

Second listening: emotional evolution of the initial reaction. Less perplexity, more awareness. It's a bit like finding your middle school friend on Facebook with whom you shared everything and it was all “we'll be friends forever”, but then you bitterly realize that today she's no longer so special and above all: you won't be friends again. It's sad, but that's life. Nothing makes absolute sense. Friends and boyfriends, objects, houses, animals, plants, books with a precise temporal location have meant something only because they met the version of us of that time, and it is precisely because of that perfect fit that they have become loaded with meaning. ORtoday it wouldn't be the same. Re-proposing the Winner (not Taco, come on, the bar) in 2026 would perhaps be an excellent marketing operation, but it would never taste the same as when we were kids.

Third listen: “Reality Awaits” is the Strokes' album when they grew up. More than twenty years have passed since “Is This It” and “Room On Fire”: our favorites are closer to retirement than graduation. That's not all: six years separate us from the last work, which these days is an eternity. For example, in the meantime auto-tune has sadly become ubiquitous. So much so that even Julian Casablancas makes disproportionate use of it: if it once worked on them, now it risks being annoying and standardized. More than “Lonely in the Future” – as the title of the latest single states – the American band seems perfectly integrated into the present.

How should we listen to this album, then? One, with serenity: because we too are adults now, just like them, and this gives us the possibility of being less radical in our musical judgment. “Reality Awaits” isn't a bad job, we just got used to nostalgia operations too well. Two, cwith joy: because we will finally see them live again (and look at the coincidences, right at the Unipol Arena in Bologna). Three, cBe careful: because in the lyrics there are sharp references against the current situation system. From “Psycho Shit”, (“From behind a desk, psycho shit, you have no honor or no balls”) which seems to condemn contemporary power, up to “Going Shopping”, where control and isolation become tools of manipulation. There are echoes of melancholy in “Falling Out Love” (“Different boots, same old song I'm in love with a ghost“), but also the desire to react to frustration in “Going to Bubble On” and “The Fruits of Conquest” (“They don't obey so we won't obey, yeah I won't obey, no, we won't obey”). And between a jab at the AI in Liar's Remors and an ending that oscillates between resignation and rebirth in “Tyrants of the Mellow Moon”, we will also find “Lonely in the Future” the song that a bit of that glorious past gives it back to us. Finally, with curiosity: why you can remain true to yourself without necessarily repeating yourself (and perhaps this is precisely the difficult part). The charisma of the members is the same as it once was, and the passing years certainly haven't taken it away from them.

Will “Reality Awaits” change the Strokes' fortunes and their reputation? Not at all. Will this album save rock again, especially now that it's needed more than ever? Neither. Let's give ourselves the time to give it a new meaning today, twenty years later: finding old friends with a few more wrinkles is a privilege we should be aware of, and grateful for.

SCORE: 6.90

TO LISTEN NOW

Psycho Shit – Lonely In The Future – Going Shopping

TO BE SKIPPED IMMEDIATELY

Dine 'N Nash – Falling Out Love

TRACKLIST

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