After teasing fans and sending out packages, The Strokes have officially released their new single ‘Going Shopping’ and shared the release date for their seventh album ‘Reality Awaits’.
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The NYC indie heroes started last week by teasing that new material was on the way and that they’d “be in touch” before soon revealing that ‘Reality Awaits’ would be coming this summer, with all messaging complete with nostalgic retro graphics. In keeping with that, they then posted fans their new single ‘Going Shopping‘ on cassette leading fans to share bootlegs online before the band debuted the song live in San Francisco.
Now, their first long-awaited new material since 2020’s acclaimed ‘The New Abnormal‘ has hit streaming, in the form of the free and breezy ‘Going Shopping’ – a festival-ready guitar-meets-synth number adopting some laid-back classic Strokes anthemics as frontman Julian Casablancas offers that he’s “goin’ out my mind, throwin’ all my plans out the window“.
It’s also been announced that ‘Reality Bites’ will arrive on Friday June 26 via Cult Records/RCA Records, and is available to pre-order here. The album was recorded in Costa Rica with producer Rick Rubin and finished in a number of international locations.
Check out the ‘Reality Awaits’ tracklist below:
1. ‘Psycho Shit’
2. ‘Dine N’Dash’
3. ‘Lonely In The Future’
4. ‘Falling Out Of Love’
5. ‘Going To Babble On’
6. ‘Going Shopping’
7. ‘Liar’s Remorse’
8. ‘The Fruits Of Conquest’
9. ‘Pros And Cons’
Speaking about work on the album back in 2022, Rubin told The Joe Rogan Experience: “We rented this house up on the top of a mountain and set the band up outside. So they’re playing… It’s like they’re doing a concert for the ocean, on the top of a mountain. It was incredible. And we did that every day, playing out in the [open], and they didn’t want to leave. It was, like, the best experience.”
Discussing the experience soon after, guitarist Albert Hammond Jr. said: “I don’t think if I told you what it looked like and what it was, you’d fully understand the ‘magical-ness’ of where we were and how it was to record like that.
“It felt really touching that one of his favourite recording experiences was this one he just had right now.”
Of the band’s future, Hammond added: “I really think what excites me about wanting to play music and continue doing it is, I don’t think we’ve written our best songs yet. I really feel that in my gut.”
The news comes ahead of the band playing Coachella this weekend before headline appearances at Bonnaroo, Outside Lands, Japan’s Summer Sonic and more. More world tour dates are expected to be announced in the weeks and months ahead.
Check out the artwork below, art directed and designed by Johann Rashid Johann Rashid, based on Richard Prince 1989 original work Untitled (Cowboy).
The Strokes being back in the saddle comes after Casablancas spoke in 2024 about “stepping away” from the band to focus on his other band The Voidz. However, he added that “it’s a very cool day job that I’m honoured to have, so I don’t feel negatively about it”.
“If it was wasting so much of my time that I couldn’t do anything positive, then I would,” he continued. “But I don’t let it get to that point. At least I don’t think so. I could be lying to myself.”
He later admitted that the Strokes being together “solely for financial reasons” impacted their “creativity”, and that they found a new impetus to stay together and return with new music. In an interview with Rolling Stone Italia, he admitted: “When I started making music, becoming passionate about my dreams and vision, I had a very clear idea of how I wanted things to evolve.
“My journey with the Strokes became something different from what initially attracted me to music.” He cited legacy bands like Bon Jovi and Green Day as evidence they could have “gone on forever” – and shed some light about how sensing that affected their output.
“We had entered a mechanism that kept us together solely for financial reasons, pushing the band’s creativity into the background,” Casablancas explained. “So I came to the conclusion that wasn’t the way I wanted to develop.”
Casablancas added: “There’s a beautiful Miles Davis quote: ‘The real risk is not changing.’ That’s why I always want to feel like I’m searching for something unexplored. If I make money, that’s fine, but I don’t want to stay still. I’m not looking for security or the status quo. If someone wants to keep creating, they have to be ready for change. Even if it means the death of something they held dear.”
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