ALBUM REVIEW: 'Reality Awaits' by The Strokes

Casablancas’ AutoTune addiction spirals out of control.

‘Got plans, I’m going online’ sings Casablancas on ‘Going To Babble On’ (a great pun) and ‘listen to the AI/ tell you what to do today’ he croons on ‘Liar’s Remorse’. Tech dependence is running theme on Reality Awaits. And what better way to sonically represent this theme of tech dependence than to drench every song in AutoTune?

We’ve heard Casablancas deploying AutoTune plenty of times on his kooky side project The Voidz – and it fitted their kooky songs. But what about on a Strokes album? Personally, I think keeping his signature baritone clean suits their raw indie/garage rock sound better. I could have accepted a bit of AutoTune here and there. But a whole LP of Casablancas sounding like T-Pain is going overboard. It completely takes away any intimacy on tracks like ‘Falling Out Of Love’ and makes a lot of these songs sound goofy. Only on ‘Dine N Dash’ and ‘Going To Babble On’ are we spared a merciful break.

It’s particularly irritating because I think this album had the potential to be a lot more fun than The New Abnormal – an album that a lot of Strokes fans loved, but that I found to be a bit dull. Admittedly, listening back, my review may have been a bit harsh, partly due to listening to so much Windmill scene rock at the time, which made The Strokes more subdued indie rock instrumentation sound like elevator music in comparison. I will stick by the fact that Rick Rubin’s dry production does the guitars and synths no favours. And Casablanca’s nonchalant vocal delivery only works when he’s singing about contrastingly weighty stuff (as I mentioned in my review, most of the lyrics on The New Abnormal were centred around waiting for things, which I’d had quite enough of during lockdown).

On Reality Awaits, they’re back working with Rick Rubin, and the hippy Santa fails to deliver his magic yet again, with many of these tracks still feeling a bit dry. But there is more variety and dynamics in the music this time around. Opener ‘…Psycho Shit’ builds up around mournful arpeggios with Casablancas howling frustratingly by the end over rolling drum fills. ‘Lonely in the Future’ throws a moody fuzzy riff at us before sharply transitioning into a funkier Angles-era style track. Meanwhile, ‘The Fruits of Conquest’ has an almost jazzy flavour.

I’m also enjoying the lyrical content a lot more this time around. While there are still plenty of references to ‘waiting’ (even in the album title), it’s spiced up with lots of striking and bizarre imagery: ‘I wanna be a 7 foot zombie/ the pay is low, but I gotta do something/ I’m at the mall, and the song is bumpin/ there goes my future wife in the little red jumpsuit’. Much of it is about the soul-sucking nature of modern day capitalism with Casablancas playing the mindless consumer and wage slave. His nonchalant delivery is perfect for this material. I just wish it wasn’t all soaked in a distracting amount of AutoTune. I can definitely see some people appreciating the AutoTune as a unique effect that fits in with the themes of technological reliance. But I find it completely jarring in an indie rock setting. Different Strokes for different folks. 

★★★☆☆

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