The Strokes release first album in six years, "Reality Awaits"

The Strokes released "Reality Awaits," their first album since 2020's Grammy-winning "The New Abnormal," with the Los Angeles Times calling it the nuttiest entry in the rock band's catalog. Twenty-five years after "Is This It," the band is arguably bigger than ever, headlining festivals like next month's Just Like Heaven in Pasadena and drawing teenage fans alongside the old guard; on Spotify, its most-streamed song isn't the early hit "Last Nite" but 2020's "The Adults Are Talking."

The new record leans into the weird: opening track "Psycho S**t" has frontman Julian Casablancas, his voice thick with AutoTune, narrating a trip "past the hall of judging dead into the bed of nightly dread." "Falling Out of Love" is a lilting robo-country ballad about dancing alone under acid rain, and "Liar's Remorse," a song about submitting to artificial intelligence, has Casablancas singing in what the Times called a "terrible Caribbean accent."

On "Lonely in the Future," Casablancas name-drops John Legend and Josh Groban, appears to accuse Harry Styles of cribbing the beat from the Strokes' own "Hard to Explain," and tells internet critic Anthony Fantano that he "would not recognize art in any age." The Times noted the album feels less like a Strokes record than a solo outing or an effort from Casablancas's other band, the Voidz, which he has used for years to air harder-edged political material.

That political streak runs through lead single "Going Shopping," whose music video restages Paul Simon's "You Can Call Me Al." Casablancas takes aim at indifference toward what he sees as a wealthy ruling class tightening its grip: "The worse reality gets, the less you want to hear about it. Solidarity can be difficult when you got cool stuff to lose."

Despite the detours, the band's core sound still holds; the Times pointed to "Dine N' Dash," "Going to Babble On" and "Lonely in the Future" as evidence the rhythm section remains as crisp as ever. The Strokes, who have kept a busy 2026 that included a Charli XCX cameo covered in Charli XCX joins The Strokes on stage during their Outside Lands headline set and an upcoming stop covered in Gorillaz, The Strokes and FKA twigs to headline Primavera Sound Buenos Aires, close the album with Casablancas sounding unbothered by his own longevity: "I've been thinking about what I want to say," he sings, "But I'm an old man now, at least that's what they tell me anyway."