Score: 8.5/10
20 years and change have passed since The Strokes released what I take to be their last album of any merit, First Impressions of Earth, excepting of course my present topic. Now, I’d like to temper this statement by saying that, with Angles and Comedown Machine, their tendency to retread into former territory, habits and sound has accumulated some new listeners, folks who missed the first wave of the band’s spiked popularity, in the early 2000s.
On Reality Awaits, finally, it seems they are indeed exploring new territory. The strange, almost ambient but grandiose opener “Psycho Sh**” wields an interesting influence genus of David Bowie bombast and Jack White wannabe beat poetry on the part of singer Julian Casablancas. Actually, I can kind of tell he’s mimicking White’s techniques on “Queen of the Bees.” But hey, I don’t really blame him.
From here, it’s a duly wacky, wild ride, hence demarcating it starkly, not a moment too soon, from what I heard as the uniform staleness of their prior two albums. The strange, laborously majestic qualities of “Dine’ n Dash” bleed into the throwback garage-rock cutesiness of “Lonely in the Future”; which might just go down as a classic Strokes track, like “Last Nite” redone with those shmaltzy touches of ’80s sound Casablancas fell so in love with circa Phrazes for the Young.
If any band could pull off unleashing “exciting corny ballad” territory in the 2020s, it would be these leather-clad city slickers, seeing as, simply, it seems it never occurred to them to try it before. “Falling out of Love” comes across something as R.E.M.’s “Tongue”; like an unabashed ode to androgyny and Motown melody, and the full band seem to not miss a beat with involvement and swagger, Fab Moretti’s unorthodox, syncopated beat anchoring things with quiet charisma. And when Casablancas sings of the curious malady of “Falling out of love / For the first time”; it’s more than obvious that this void has already been filled with a newfound passion for music — one wielding dynamic, multifarious and hitherto unexplored results.
Just looking at the stature of these songs, too, you’ve got to like how their statures lend themselves to the nine-track total amassing a full album. Though perhaps not in the magnitude of Hum, who on Inlet leveled a new allegiance to 10-minute epic, The Strokes here do imply an evolution of influence, to which I alluded to before, in the shift to these longer tunes. Is there some playful, wannabe-poetic vocal virtuoso going on here from Casablancas? Well, sure. But, as always, his vocal timbre seems to play as a preternaturally perfect complement to Albert Hammond Jr.’s guitar, and drummer Moretti sounds, as always, like he’s programmed by A.I. There’s no question: these guys are built different.
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