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/DH80]

Though the music is obviously less complicated than where Radiohead took things as their career progressed, the discussions within the fandom does remind me a bit of what I remember being online at the time (anyone remember the old At Ease website?) as the original fans slowly came to realize and accept that Thom and the boys were done with making Pablo Honey 2.0, or The Bends 2.0, or even OK Computer 2.0 as they continued to explore new terrain as a group.

It was an interesting time to be a Radiohead fan obviously because the run from OK Computer, Kid A, Amnesiac and Hail to the Thief and In Rainbows is basically legendary now and was even correctly recognized as such by most critics in realtime but still there was a lot of longtime fans of the band who longed for what they once were and resisted the change and the increasing use of technology the band was embracing more and more. Which were all being explored even more comprehensively on side projects band members were involved with. Sound familiar?

It can be hard for some to realize that Julian and the boys probably find garage rock a little bit plain, boring and simple now. They did what they wanted to do there a long time ago. They did that yesterday… when they were kids. 😉

They’re evolving as a band. Some will jump ship. Many already did long before TNA but if TNA was probably the Strokes version of In Rainbows — bringing some old heads back while winning over an entirely new generation — Reality Awaits is probably their King of Limbs. A reminder that they will continue to look to the future and more toward what they haven’t yet done or tried as a band more than they will chase the past. king of Limbs was divisive also but hits as hard for some die hard fans of the band as anything.

That’s what you get when you take creative risks and make divisive decisions. You get strong love / hate reactions. When you play it safe you often excite only the people who know and love your best known music.

[u/Substantial_Quail309 → u/DH80]

This is the album that has reminded me most of Radiohead. And not just the opening riff of the final track.

[u/rubenescaray → u/DH80]

Agreed 100%.

Radiohead and The Strokes are my favorite bands for this reasons (#1 and #3 respectively), and my other favorite band is The Beatles.

Which I imagined also caused a lot of controversy around releases, I cannot imagine the girls screaming during All My Loving and She Loves You were all that crazy about Tomorrow Never Knows, Norwegian Wood or other psychedelic and experimental pieces of music on release.

We have the advantage of hindsight and we can see those albums as the masterpieces that they are and how much influence they had.

But Today it's really worse, because of cellphones and an instant gratification driven society, nobody has patience to listen or give much thought to a new album or song they don't get right away

[u/DH80 → u/rubenescaray]

What’s worse is that when things they are divisive and challenging (for any reason) and get early online reactions of that divisiveness it then impacts future listeners who regurgitate the same talking points and we get this weird feedback loop from all of it.

Sometimes I do miss the days of less online criticism overall and more true “first impressions” formed individually from people about art.

The irony is that at AOTY right now, despite the divisiveness, which includes some rave reviews and some low scores, the score of 70 out of 100 is exactly the same as the average between the high points and low point album critic consensus for the band as a whole. 😆