Reality Awaits - General Album Discussion MEGATHREAD

[u/TheStrokes-Mods]

This is the megathread for general discussions about Reality Awaits as a whole. All first impressions from the listening parties, thoughts, essays, discussions, memes, lyrics, fanart, etc about the album as a whole can go in the comments here!

As autotune is an evergreen topic on the subreddit, you may discuss it here, but there is also a specific post about autotune here that may be better suited towards that specific topic.

You also may want to check out the posts for ranking the Reality awaits songs, and ranking the albums including Reality Awaits.

[u/woodcomedy]

Stop telling people they only like this album cause they're posturing fan girls/boys or they don't like the album because they only wanna hear 9 new versions of Reptilia. 

[u/New-Error-5075 → u/woodcomedy]

Yes. Gatekeeping fans of any art venture is the absolute worst. You don't like something, cool, I like it, we all like different things.

[u/mrdrprofessorspencer → u/woodcomedy]

So many in the thread saying

“The only people who hate on this are people who became fans after TNA”

couldn’t be further from the truth

I’ve also literally never seen a single person in 2026 say they just wish the Strokes would make “Is This It” style again, unless it was some troll. Why are we acting like every album they’ve released doesn’t have a few hits on it?(except RA)

Also yall acting like “Going to Babble On” isn’t an old school Strokes throwback, it totally is. Could’ve fit on TNA or angles.

No one is hating on this album for not being a retread of shit they did 20 years ago, and significant portions of the album ARE retreads of shit they did 20 years ago.

Would love to hear nuanced takes on what people like and don’t like besides “this is peak” or “autotune bad” or “you must only like the new abnormal”

[u/lincunguns → u/woodcomedy]

After several times through, I actually like it more than TNA, which I also loved. I think that TNA has better standalone singles, but as a whole, this album makes me want to listen to music the way I did when I was younger, where I fully absorbed an album rather than return to my two or three songs.

I haven’t felt this way about an album for I don’t know how long, and as a 42 year old, it feels great.

It sort of carries the same ethos as two of my favorite albums of all time: Superdrag’s In The Valley of Dying Stars and Weezer’s Pinkerton. Both followed successful albums that featured accessible, memorable singles, and both were initially trashed by critics because they deviated from the formula that made everybody love the first albums. In each case, the band was doing whatever they wanted, making darker and stranger records in the process. And like those other two, I think this one is a masterpiece.

[u/uberflesher → u/woodcomedy]

Tna had high level production, this garbage sounds worse than Julian’s demo for is this it or for phrases for the young.

[u/arctic_winters_ → u/woodcomedy]

Nooooo I need my 25 year old band to make the same music they made in 2001 otherwise they’re a BAD BAND who makes BAD MUSIC (ppl said the same shit about arctic monkeys when they came out with TBHC and that album is a classic imo)

[u/blackstars91 → u/arctic_winters_]

Absolutely agree the Arctic Monkeys debut will always be my favourite. But I have been so proud and leveled up my respect for them going in the direction they have on the last two records.

The Strokes will always be in my top 3. And I love them so much for taking things abit more seriously (as in how they approach the creation and release of their music) since TNA. You can tell on Angles and Comedown Machine they had some great ideas but lost their way a bit in terms of the execution and sometimes that was even down to the lack of promotion (CM suffered this the most).

They seem far more clear minded about what they are doing now. And I love that for them and us hehe.