The Strokes: Reality Awaits review – a perfect marriage of mayhem and melody on their best album in years

(RCA/Cult) Allying the crackpot strangeness of Julian Casablancas’ side projects with his band’s gift for pop minimalism, the New Yorkers are on playful, joyous form Here’s a sentence no old-head Strokes fan wants to hear: to understand Reality Awaits, the stalwart NYC group’s seventh album and first in six years, you first have to understand the Voidz. Julian Casablancas’s other band has been taking up more and more of his time in recent years, much to the chagrin of fans who may have dipped into the group’s painfully, awkwardly proggy 2014 debut Tyranny and decided to just let the old legend

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