Album Review: Reality Awaits — by The Strokes

This one seems to be pretty divisive, to say the least. If I’m to believe everything I read on the internet, people either love it or hate it.

I’m honestly somewhere in the middle.

There’s a lot to love about Reality Awaits, despite the fact that I fundamentally disagree with one of its biggest artistic decisions.

I usually actively avoid singles as they’re released because I like sitting down with an album for the first time completely fresh. But The Strokes have been one of my favorite bands since the early 2000s, so when they started releasing singles from this one, I couldn’t resist.

Spoiler alert: Is This It remains my favorite Strokes album and will eventually get its rightful 6/6 Rings review here. I also loved The New Abnormal (it even made my top 50 albums of the first half of the decade) so I was excited to hear where they were going next.

Then I heard the singles.

And I thought they were great… except for one very distinct decision. If you’ve heard them, you probably already know what I’m talking about.

The Auto-Tune.

Top Tracks — Dine N’ Dash, Lonely in the Future, Liar’s Remorse

Released July 24, 2026

Whether you liked it or not, you noticed it. Personally, I hoped they were doing it specifically for the single releases to get people talking. Honestly, that could have been genius: release these weird Auto-Tuned versions, generate some buzz, and then drop the “real” versions with the album.

Then July 24 came around.

I put the opening track, “Psycho Shit,” on in my car and was immediately disappointed to discover that, nope, they were committed to it.

For most bands, I probably would have checked out at that point. The singles had already warned me, and the opening track confirmed they weren’t giving it up.

But this is The Strokes with Rick Rubin. Of course I was listening to the whole thing.

And I’m glad I did, because there are absolutely songs here that I enjoy.

“Din N’Dash” is decent. The Auto-Tune on “Lonely in the Future” actually works for me. I loved “Liar’s Remorse.” “The Fruits of Conquest” is a fun one that pushes them slightly outside their comfort zone, and the instrumental performance on “Tyrants of the Mellow Moon” is one of my favorite parts of the record.

And to be clear, I’m not against Auto-Tune.

There are plenty of times when I absolutely love it, even on Julian Casablancas’ voice. His feature on Daft Punk’s “Instant Crush” is probably one of my top 100 songs of all time.

The problem is how it’s used here.

For much of Reality Awaits, it distracts me from everything else happening in the song. Rather than adding something interesting to Casablancas’ voice, it often feels like it’s sitting on top of it and trying to take him OUT of tune somehow. And that’s especially frustrating when you’re dealing with a singer who already has such a distinctive voice, something he’s proven time and time again, including on parts of this very album.

Maybe I’ll eventually understand the decision. Maybe I won’t.

If the goal was to get people talking, it certainly worked. But even then, I can’t help thinking there was a missed opportunity here. Go crazy with the single versions. Auto-Tune the hell out of them. Get everyone arguing about it online.

Then “fix” them for the album.

Now that would have been a hell of a rollout.

Still, underneath the production choices I don’t like, there’s enough here to remind me why I love The Strokes in the first place. There are songs I’ll return to and moments that genuinely work.

Will I buy it on vinyl?

Most likely.

But only after I finish collecting the rest of their records.

Reality Awaits sits right on the line between a 3 and a 4 for me. There are songs and moments I genuinely like, but too much of the album falls into territory I probably won’t deliberately return to.

But if I’m following our own rubric according to Sixth Ring Rating System, that pushes it, just barely, to: