Six years after “The New Abnormal”, the Americans reunite with producer Rick Rubin on a seventh album that is as perplexing as it is fascinating. A postmodern, disenchanted work for the worst and above all the best.
A sense of unease settles in. What is happening? The journalist is completely disoriented. Are the New Yorkers perhaps pulling his leg, a proper taunt from a bunch of kids in whom everything seems to come easy? Or should he take the declarations of these gifted young slackers with the utmost seriousness? He can hardly believe it. “Really?” he mutters after guitarist Albert Hammond Jr. confesses that not only was Julian Casablancas the author of the lyrics on every song signed The Strokes, but that the latter also hid behind every note of music the band had produced so far. Nothing less. “A guitar solo and everything that goes with it, man… for sure,” smiles the prodigy with restraint. Nervous laughter. The awkwardness is palpable.
This moment, captured in Meet Me in the Bathroom (2022), a documentary adapted from Lizzy Goodman’s famous book about New York’s scene at the dawn of the new millennium, says everything about the machinery at work within the era’s greatest rock band. On one side, a kid from elsewhere, apart, who already seems to bear the weight of the world and success on his shoulders since the release in 2001 of a sensational first EP, The Modern Age. On the other, frustrated but realistic musician friends, thus bound by the otherworldly and magnetic aura of their comrade. And facing them, a stunned audience, forever mistreated.
We know what happened next. Tremendous pressure, internal tensions, solo ventures and albums of mixed quality, where flashes of genius and disappointments cross paths. And yet: “Julian has a vision” to borrow Albert’s words from the documentary. Condemned to leadership, the taciturn New Yorker will never stop pursuing it. Always moving forward. Always exploring. Willing to confuse. Solo or together.
Four Proclamations of the Apocalypse
Purists of the early days, this is not your release. Detractors of Auto-Tune (yes, its use is as heavy as the two leading singles teased in the spring), please kindly exit. Reality Awaits does not resemble any Strokes record. And for a good reason: it aims to demolish the myth to rebuild it from its own ruins and from the ruins of the world. In 42 minutes, and the same amount of time for each song to devour the previous one in an inexorable flow that fuses cultural references (Lonely in the Future for the more explicit) and grand lines for the youth, the album recycles images of the past and sonic relics of the future to speak of a present at the bottom of a chasm. “We are all dead” announces the narrator’s voice over the sepulchral opening Psycho Shit.
From the wild shores of Costa Rica, where Reality Awaits began to take shape in 2022, the strokes-tinged melancholy, steeped in the romance and nihilism dear to its singer, has never sounded so desperate. And that’s a compliment. The Earth’s perception is anything but cheerful. Or is it? The implosion of the techno-capitalist system feels imminent.
If Julian Casablancas has definitely ceded the role of demiurge to the producer Rick Rubin since The New Abnormal (2020), in the hope of reintegrating mortals and handing back the responsibilities and other delicate arbitrations to the bearded guru, his artistic, philosophical and political obsessions seep into every aspect of this seventh album. And yet, The Strokes give the impression of never having sounded so collective.
End-of-Time Soundtrack
Guitars raging, tortured keyboards, and astonishing drum fills from Fabrizio Moretti; ominous organ, hypnotic bass and even congas, groove and an impromptu quotation from Aphrodite’s Child’s 666 (The Fruits of Conquest, incredible)… The five horsemen of the apocalypse ring out as if they’re having a field day. Albert Hammond Jr. even claims this is his “favorite album the Strokes have ever made”. It’s hard to say what the other guitarist Nick Valensi makes of it, after his voluntary withdrawal from the band on the world tour kicked off in early June, fueling further fraternal rumors.
A labyrinthine, somber and fatal new wave trip (Dine and Dash would perfectly fit on The Cure’s Disintegration), where a kind of end-of-time yacht rock resounds over a sick FM soundtrack and pop surges with a melancholy subtext (Going Shopping, Going To Babble On). Reality Awaits is a house of leaves where the Strokes’ mainstream is plunged into the abyss. And the unease takes hold.
What’s happening? The journalist is completely disoriented. Are the New Yorkers perhaps mocking him, a proper wink from a bunch of fortysomethings who seem to have everything without effort? Or should he take the declarations of these five gifted slackers with the utmost seriousness? He cannot believe it. “Really?” he mutters. Thus ends The Modern Age. Welcome to the post era, the waiting room between the old world and the reality eager to reveal itself to a decadent humanity. The Strokes glimpsed it. They had the vision.
Reality Awaits (RCA/Sony Music). Out on July 24. In concert at the Accor Arena, Paris, on October 22.
