The Strokes have announced that their seventh album, Reality Awaits, will arrive June 26, and they marked the news by sending cassettes of a new song, “Going Shopping,” to 100 people who had agreed to hand over a mailing address. The track got its live debut Monday night in San Francisco, just days before the band is set to play the second of two shows there tonight.
The release gives the band a fresh push around a record that was produced by Rick Rubin in Costa Rica and completed around the world, with cover art by Johann Rashid that incorporates Richard Prince’s 1989 painting “Untitled (Cowboy).” Official audio for “Going Shopping” arrived on 4/7, and the song is a sharp contrast to the more energetic pulse of 2021’s The New Abnormal. On the recording described by the source, Julian Casablancas’ voice is Auto-Tuned into oblivion until he lands on the final line: “If you’re better than me/ Then you don’t have to judge me.”
The rollout also shows how the band is choosing to meet fans this time around. Last week, it posted a link inviting people to sign up for marketing texts, then used that channel and the mailing-address collection to distribute the cassette release before the full album campaign widened. Reality Awaits is a co-release from RCA and Casablancas’ label, Cult Records, and the timing matters because the band is heading into a busy stretch that includes a return to Coachella this weekend for the first time in 15 years. That makes the new album announcement less a routine update than the start of a run that will put the Strokes back in front of a large festival crowd and a long-absent audience all at once.
Read Also: The Strokes New Album Announced: Reality Awaits Due This Summer
What happens next is already fixed: the band plays again in San Francisco tonight, then heads to Coachella, with Reality Awaits due to follow on June 26. The question now is not whether the Strokes are back in motion; it is how far this new cycle will carry them after years away from that festival stage. Read more: The Strokes New Album Announced: Reality Awaits Due This Summer.
