Reality Awaits: The Strokes, Sea-to-Sky

It began the next day. A Nixon road trip from Vancouver to Squamish. Through Stanley Park, across the Lions Gate Suspension Bridge to the North Shore, west to Horseshoe Bay and up Highway 99, the curvaceous tarmac cut between mountains and ocean, called the Sea-to-Sky. 

Songs by The Strokes were playing in the car. 

The playlist began with “Going to Babble On” from their 2026 album Reality Awaits. It was the same song the band opened up with the night before in Vancouver. And we were there! It took some effort. Let me explain.

Pact and Promise

One notable pact I have promised with my daughter, Jennifer, was to see The Strokes play live. We had a proper look at the prospect when the New York lads had a gig in Seattle in August 2022. The band was touring with The New Abnormal, an album she had got me into after I had introduced her to the previous ones. They attracted me with their punk-driven spirit, interspersed with occasional appointments with soulfulness, pop and prog-rock creative streaks, and guitar-driven jazz-rock fusion (Some like to call this Yacht Rock; I say: “There’s some Steely Dan in those riffs”). 

Trump was between gigs in the White House back then (the present tariff and sovereignty nonsense prevents us from visiting the USA right now), but it would be a long drive from Calgary, and ticket costs plus hotel bills were steep. Sensible heads prevailed over hearts; we agreed to let the idea go. Four years later, The Strokes got enough new songs together to go back out on tour with a new album, Reality Awaits. They booked a stop in Vancouver and, serendipitously, Jennifer was studying and working there. We were in!

Porteau Cove

The first port of call on our Sea-to-Sky tour was Porteau Cove. The heritage past of “Water’s Gate”, with steamships stopping en route between Vancouver and Squamish, shows through in the rusting dock reaching out into the depths of Howe Sound, the most southerly classic fjord on the Pacific coast of North America. 

Babbling

The Strokes started up their show at Rogers Arena with “Going To Babble On” from the new album Reality Awaits. Their proper football-game-length show in the NHL Vancouver Canucks hockey arena comprised nineteen songs selected from all seven of their studio albums, plus a standout EP track. 

This place is a zoo

The second song, “Hard to Explain” from their debut studio album Is This It (2001), comes with a lovely drop after the lyrics “The joke is on you, this place is a zoo. You’re right, it’s true”. The lighting crew was ready. The arena momentarily went dark, then bright again. The crowd went wild, and we were up on our feet from then on in. 

“Going Shopping”, one of the singles from the new album, was next, with just a touch of Auto-Tune in the voice of Julian Casablancas, wearing his wide-sided shades and a longer-length leather jacket. One of his schoolmates, Fabrizio Moretti, who originally helped form the band in 1998, played drums. The other, guitarist Nick Valensi, had taken time off from performing and was replaced on stage by Steve Schiltz, whose regular job is with Longwave and Blue October. Albert Hammond Jr. (guitar) and Nikolai Fraiture (bass) completed the five-man lineup that has performed and influenced contemporary music for twenty-five years.

Juicebox

Fraiture’s driving bass line introduced the multifaceted structure of “Juicebox” that followed. It’s a fine use of the “Peter Gunn Theme”, written by Henry Mancini for a television series in 1958 (While online sources suggest that Mancini was given a partial songwriting credit for the song, I see no evidence of that on my CD copy.) The battle-cry of “Why won’t you come over here?/We got a city to love” transitions into a gorgeous pre-chorus jazz break over the lyrics “Old time grudges/Will die slowly/I know you miss the/Way I saw you”. 

Sorry about our President

Casablancas took a moment to apologize to the Canadian crowd for the hydronym change that Donald Trump spitefully announced earlier in the day.  “I like what your Prime Minister is saying. Sorry about our President,” he said. Don’t fret, Julian, Lake Ontario will always be known by us Canadians and the rest of the free world by that name.

From Strumminess to Punkiness

Our journey north along the shores of the Pacific Ocean progressed as we listened to the next two songs in the concert playlist taken from Is This It: “Someday” and “Take It Or Leave It”. The latter has a brilliant musical progression from gentle strumminess to outraged punkiness from the Pistols in the lyrics “He’s gonna let you down,”. And there’s a find in the Foo Fighters for me there when Casablancas bursts out the temple veins with “I said just take it or leave it”. 

One of my favourites from the gig was “Life Is Simple in the Moonlight”. It has a creamy-rich guitar solo, not overstated but powerful and progressive enough to sound like some of the best melancholy from Steven Wilson; enough jazzed-through minor chords to pull on your heartstrings. Sadly, one of our favourites, “Machu Picchu” from the same album, wasn’t played in the gig. 

Dine N’ Dash

After a stop and a hike around the Pacific temperate rainforest by Shanon Falls, we headed north through Squamish to have a late breakfast in Brackendale. “Reptilia” was playing as we parked up at Fergie’s Cafe. I was thinking about some of the songs by The Reytons, one of our favourite Yorkshire bands, and how they might appreciate, or have been influenced by, the chunky chords laid out in this song from Room on Fire (2003). 

We walked over to the restaurant and waited on the wooden veranda to get a table. It’s a popular place, for good reason, located by the banks of the Cheakamus River. Their Smoked Pulled Pork Ranchero is as tasty as the New Order-esque riff and rolling bass line on “Dine N’Dash”, one of the tracks from Reality Awaits with some more Steven Wilson-like progressive suggestions. After a walk along the pebbled beach of the low-level river, we turned back south toward Squamish, tuned into “Call it Fate, Call it Karma”. We reminisced about how this song, with its softer jazz chords, was accompanied at the gig by thousands of waving cell phone torches and laser lights down onto the stage that Casablancas said: “made me blind in one eye”. 

The Guitars are Talking 

More songs at the gig were sung with lyrics such as “Some people think they’re always right” (from “You Only Live Once”) and “I think I know what you mean, but watch what you say” (Ize of the World). “One Way Trigger” from the Comedown Machine album (2013), whose opening reminds me of Norwegian pop band A-ha from the 1980s, was performed to pitch perfection by Casablancas going falsetto, maybe approaching a third octave in his singing? 

“Automatic Stop” with its reggae riffs, backbeat drumming and fronded, palm-muted guitar led into “The Adults Are Talking”, from The New Abnormal (2020). It was the last number before the (always expected; always appreciated) encore. Jennifer and I sang along to the guitar riffs from our terraced vantage point high up and distant from the stage. The sound engineer did a splendid job bringing out the two talking guitars and muted, string-chipping picking. The whammy bar hits were missing, but we can forgive that (“Oh, maybe not tonight”). So good to hear this Nixon family favourite live and on point. Best song of the night! 

We repeated our voice-overs in the car by the beach at Sp’akw’us Feather Park, Squamish, surrounded by sculptures by James Harry and Maskull Lasserre. Seeing these artworks had me thinking about the photographic journey that led to the front cover design of Reality Awaits and to ponder over its fit (read the lyrics: “Up on his horse, up on his horse”, from “Ode to the Mets”?) with the lyrics and musical legacy of The Strokes. More to come on that later!

Encore of Joy

The band came back on stage to play four songs for their encore, beginning with “Lonely in the Future”, a song with keyboards from Reality Awaits. Up second was “Threat of Joy”, one of my favourite songs of the night, featured on the four-track EP Future Present Past (2016). It has a beautifully rendered minor-key melodic chorus break (“And for the first time in my life/I’m gonna get myself right”) like the Adagietto from Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 5. It’s sad enough for Death in Venice, the film directed by Luchino Visconti (1971). Sad enough for tears. And there’s a gloriously gentle, melodic guitar close-out. 

There was the clangy guitar riff and carefully understated backbeat from the drums in “Whatever Happened?”; then the final song of the night, “Ode to the Mets” with its lyrics (some of Jennifer’s favourites) belted out by Casablancas. I love how he invites the start-up of the percussion (“Drums please, Fab”) on the studio recording; the shouted, yet controlled vocals (“I’m under his thumb, I’m on his back”); the outright curiosity of “I was just bored, playin’ the guitar”; and the closing with “So pardon the silence that you’re hearing”. Despite a necessary on-stage adjustment to his octaves, Casablancas and the band hit it out of the park with their final song at the Canucks hockey arena. 

Over and Out

Frontman Julian Casablancas had poise and over two octaves of vocal splendour. The band played with intention and passion. Frivolity was sparse. They got on with doing their job of delivering the music they have created and influenced others with for twenty-five years. The Strokes get my vote as the best honorary Canadian band. Your gig was grand!

My top three selects from The Strokes gig: 

• “The Adults Are Talking”
• “Life is Simple in the Moonlight”
• “Threat of Joy”

If you were at this one in Vancouver or at another Strokes gig, what were your favourites? Let me know!