By: Isabelle Parker
After a six-year hiatus following their highly acclaimed album The New Abnormal, rock legends the Strokes have returned with a new single titled ‘Going Shopping’. However, the song’s utter lack of substance has left many fans wondering: is this really what we’ve been waiting six years for?
The whole time I was listening to ‘Going Shopping’, I was waiting for some kind of beat drop or transition into a line that held the song’s true soul and grit. But it never came. ‘Going Shopping’ is lacking any kind of substance, feeling fundamentally airy and missing the depth, complexity and overall catchiness that has characterised Strokes songs in the past. It’s the kind of tune you forget as soon as it stops playing, because there’s nothing truly memorable about it.
The opening riff is mildly catchy and could have been a solid foundation if the other elements weren’t all so lacking. The music has no depth: it is airy, light, and makes no impact. Nick Valensi and Albert Hammond Jr’s guitars are cheery and insubstantial in the way the backing to a soda commercial is. Nikolai Fraiture’s bass is barely audible over the warped, discordant vocals. Moretti’s drums are simple and bland, sounding more suited to pop than rock.
And let’s address the elephant in the room—Julian Casablancas’ autotune. I’ll start out by saying that I am in no way opposed to vocal effects; Casablancas’ voice has taken on several different personas throughout the Strokes’ different eras, from the raw, compressed vocals of Is This It, to the dreamy melodies of Comedown Machine, to the high, sweet falsettos of The New Abnormal. The vocals have always matched the album’s overarching tone, and expecting Casablancas to sound the same way he did on Is This It throughout the band’s entire career would be doing a disservice to each unique album they have produced. First Impressions of Earth would not have the same impact if Casablancas had sung in the same falsetto pitch he did on The New Abnormal; Comedown Machine would not be so cohesive if Casablancas had put down the low-fidelity processer and instead picked up the same compressor that he used on their debut album. However, if ‘Going Shopping’ is any indicator, I feel that Reality Awaits may be the first album on which they miss the mark in terms of matching the vocals to the music.
I’m also not entirely opposed to the specific type of autotune that Casablancas employs in ‘Going Shopping’, and in his second band, the Voidz. While not a huge Voidz fan myself, I can see how Casablancas’ vocal effects have their place in this music, which in general has a more electronic tone than that of the Strokes. However, ‘Going Shopping’ is a Strokes song, not a Voidz one, and I do think the autotune is painfully out of place in this context. In Voidz songs, Casablancas’ distorted vocals are mirrored by distorted guitars and drums, while in ‘Going Shopping’, Casablancas’ vocals are warped but the rest of the band’s sound remains light and precise, ultimately creating an incohesive feel that gives the impression of an ill-advised mashup of a New Abnormal demo and a Voidz song. It gives the impression that Casablancas forewent the thorough consideration he has previously applied to past Strokes albums and simply went with the same vocal effects he has grown accustomed to using with the Voidz.
Further intensifying this discordant feel are the lyrics. I feel that these may have been one of the most promising aspects of the song, but fell short of making a real impact. The lyrics carry underlying themes of anti-capitalism and consumerism, but these messages are distorted by the vocal effects and trivialised by the use of colloquial terms such as “zombie” and “mall”, giving the lyrics an unfinished, casual feeling. The cheery music that backs these lyrics conflicts their cynical nature, further diminishing the song’s message. While I am in no way against the contrasting of cheerful music against depressing lyrics—the Smiths are masters of this—and sometimes think this even helps to emphasise a song’s message, in this case there is just an overwhelming lack of cohesion. When the vocals don’t match the music and the music doesn’t match the lyrics, it gives the song an overly disjointed, loose feeling that is so at odds with the tone of the Strokes’ past work.
The beachy tone created by the light, cheery guitars and punchy drums immediately made me think of the band’s 2005 ‘Juicebox’ B-side ‘Hawaii’. To me, ‘Going Shopping’ slightly resembles a lower quality, watered down version of what was even then already only a B-side. To think that a song of this calibre has been selected as the first single released off Reality Awaits makes me nervous as to what the rest of the album could hold. Could the Strokes really have fallen so far that what in 2005 would have been a B-side knock off has become in 2026 the shining harbinger of new material?
To me, the lack of substance of ‘Going Shopping’ makes it feel more like an early demo than a finished single, and I think the band could have produced something really great if they’d stripped it back to the signature riff and then developed something with a little more substance—potentially leaving Casablancas’ vocal effects to the Voidz.
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