Reality Awaits

The Strokes — 2026

“The Strokes sound older, stranger, and more comfortable letting their songs wander before snapping back into focus.”

Six years is a long time to sit with expectations, and The Strokes seem to know it. Reality Awaits arrives with Julian Casablancas leaning all the way into AutoTune, using it less as a fix and more of a direction for multiple tracks here. For the first few spins, I will admit the effect is a lot. It sits right up front and dares you to reject it. But something happens around the third or fourth listen. The processing stops sounding like a gimmick and becomes part of the groove, and I stopped noticing it the way you stop noticing a singer’s unique voice once a song grabs you. I do think Rick Rubin helped give the album its mellow, almost Zen atmosphere. You can hear that looseness in the way the songs wander off and then snap back into focus, a characteristic that still feels unmistakably like The Strokes.

Underneath the effects, these are real songs about getting older and wondering when that identity finally starts to feel true. On “Going Shopping,” Casablancas admits he is an old man, or at least that is what they tell him, and the whole record carries that shrug. The writing is often sharper than the production lets on, which is why I keep circling one thought I cannot shake. What would this album sound like with the AutoTune stripped off? I think a lot of critics would hand out warmer marks without it, and part of me wants to start a petition for a raw version of the album. Then again, the effect is the point, and I know younger fans who never memorized Is This It fall hard for exactly this sound. The record is not perfect. It occasionally mistakes indulgence for adventure. But I like it more every time I put it on, and that slow burn counts for a lot.