Reality Awaits: The Strokes return, vocoder first

Six years after The New Abnormal, The Strokes are back, and Reality Awaits has very high highs and very low lows. People are calling it an evil version of the last album, which is about right. It sounds like The Strokes and, at the same time, not like them at all. The New Abnormal had no skips for me. This one has a few.

The elephant in the room is the autotune, smeared across one of the most recognisable voices in music. Some people have joked that Julian Casablancas took the Daft Punk break-up too hard, and honestly, I would not count that out to be true. It worked on "Instant Crush" and "Infinity Repeating" because those songs were meant to sound like transmissions from a haunted future.

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Here it feels more like a statement that Julian Casablancas is trying to make: Artificiality doing to a human voice what it is currently doing to everything else. That is the generous reading. The less generous one is that the two singles – "Going Shopping" and "Falling Out of Love" – are the weakest tracks. They are over-processed and under-produced and gave everyone the wrong first impression. Go back to Is This It, then look at almost anything after it, and you find the same swerve that this album has. Julian says what is on his mind. However, what is on anyone's mind changes with time. Anyone expecting a second The New Abnormal was always going to be disappointed, and that is not a shortcoming on the album’s part.

The rest of the songs are good, and it grows on you. I first heard it on Friday when it came out. It is now Sunday, and I have caught myself humming it in the shower. "Dine N'Dash" is the standout: clean guitar tone, minimal effects, Julian actually singing, everything flowing where it should. "Lonely in the Future" is the catchiest track here and the most argumentative, with Julian taking aim at artists who copy and steal, reminding everyone he was doing the same as a kid. Addressing fellow musicians is fair game. Name-checking a YouTube music critic, less so. That bit feels like punching down, and it is a little corny.

"Going to Babble On" carries the summer, with a pre-chorus that will have you reaching for "You Only Live Once”. Underneath the funk, Julian sounds tired of shouting about politics while everybody scrolls past. One line, about how one side in a fight is simply stronger and some things never shift, hits quite hard. Lyrically, it is Julian doing his thing: politics, yearning, nostalgia, and swipes at corporate power, none of it spelt out, which can either be read as profound or convenient depending on your mood.

The middle stretch is patchier. "Liar's Remorse" is all keys and voice, no drums, circling love, sacrifice, AI and lonesome old memories, and reads better than it sounds. "The Fruits of Conquest" leans on percussion, takes its time, and creeps up on you. Then "Tyrants of the Mellow Moon" concludes properly, with a riff worth the wait and one of the few moments where the autotune does not feel like a misfit. Its chorus is about waiting, which is funny, because fans have counted well over a hundred uses of that word across Julian's discography. Also, waiting is exactly what we will be doing until the next one.

Overall, this album gets a three out of five. Not bad, not remarkable, lifted by four or five properly good songs. Next time I would like more of that four in the morning New York taxi feeling that only this band can do and rather less yearning processed through a vocoder.

Sharar Chowdhury is learning how to be a manager and believes "I'm confused" is not a complete sentence. Send him emails at: [email protected]