I’m a casual fan of the Voidz. The fairweather kind. But I just heard this song today for the first time. Bruh ! I know we all have diff tastes and schemas and associations … But the moment the vocals come in, I feel like I’m floating in a John Lennon song. I love !
Like any completely normal person, I periodically make personal playlists so I can hear my favorite tracks off Strokes albums, in the order I prefer. The order is not a ranking … so please don’t take this arrangement to imply hierarchy. Anyway, I feel like I’ve just heard Welcome to Japan again for the first time.
I’ve bumped this album since the day it dropped. Blasting my favs (One Way Trigger, 80s Comedown Machine) … but somehow in a post-REALITY AWAITS world … my sense of what a Strokes song “sounds like” has evolved … and thus so have I.
To wit: I‘m listening to Welcome to Japan on repeat and feel a mix of euphoria and shame. Euphoria at having just now been given a brand new Strokes song (and one that makes me want to dance around my place). And shame at having dismissed this song as weird sounding or kind of a sonic downer (whatever that even means) or too-matter-of-fact in the way Julian sings in the verse.
Now, I love every moment of this song. Every moment.
To anyone who may hear my cry, forgive me. This song is everything.
I realize now that I unwittingly went into the new album looking for The New Abnormal 2: Electric Boogaloo.
And so I was crushed at how flat and distant and kinda lame the songs were. So I took a few days off. (The Strokes have been my favorite band since 2001, literally). I floated back on Monday with a few tracks that I didn’t absolutely loathe on first listen …but stayed entirely away from the ones I did. I started to hear some flickers of brilliance (the guitar outro on Dine n Dash … or that skippy bridge at end of Liar’s Remorse). And then … well, the rest is history. And now I treasure every song.
I truly treasure every song.
If you hate the album or feel underwhelmed by it, my post is not meant to change your mind or even imply you should feel a certain way. I am not ranking this album against others. I’m not using words like “best” or its variants.
I am saying, however, that I’m a person. And I love something. And in a world where you, yourself, hate the very thing that I love, nothing changes. My love doesn’t make contact with your hate. And your hate makes zero contact with my love. You can fire off the most winning zinger in the comments below and even be “right” according to your logic to do so.
And I will still love this album. Because I’m not arguing for its quality.
I am merely stating something phenomenological: My own experience. Something internal. A feeling I have while listening to these songs, this album. 💛
For those who have come around to this album, what was your journey like?
The Strokes have been my favorite band since 2001. There’s something about the SOUND of this band. It’s impossible to describe. The closest way to describe the feeling you get from their sound (no matter the song: “The Modern Age” or ”Under Control” or “Razorblade” or “80’s Comedown Machine” [!!!!!] or “Threat of Joy” or “Eternal Summer,” etc.) is that YOU are in the band and living the music, somehow making it, being it, idk.
And Reality Awaits is like a universe of different memories or dreams for you to enter and spend time experiencing. Yes, these are “songs” with titles and enumerated as track listings. But every song is an album unto itself. To me.
I love this album with all the warmth in my heart. And all the light in my soul.
I know beauty because of this band.
I have so much appreciation for “Falling Out of Love.”
And I guess I’m writing about it here because this song is far, far too important for it become anything other than an additional sacred experience now loosed into the world.
Perhaps the skeleton key for those who can’t yet find the golden sorrow in the sound … is that it runs over six minutes. I think “Eternal Summer” is the only other Strokes song to run over six mins. So, clearly, this song is meant to be something of an epic.
And it is.
Anyway, the more I listen to this song, the more two things become top of mind:
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Pedantic footnote: I use ”singer” and not “Casablancas” because obviously singers don’t always write or sing songs from their own 1st-person autobiographical POV, even when using “I, me,“ etc.