Reality awaits | concert review
As a concert aficionado, I’ll see anyone, irregardless of genre or if I am familiar with them or not (price is a BIG player though…) and recently I was just able to hit my 20th show! Growing up in the greater Philadelphia area, we were an easy tour stop for MANY artists, and one of my biggest concerns moving to North Carolina was being separated from live music.
But thank goodness my worries were debunked.
On Thursday Sept. 17th, I piled into a car with some friends and took on the 1.5 hour drive to Charlotte to the Truliant Amphitheater. Why? Well because yours truly had recently purchased a lawn ticket to see The Strokes. Yes. THE STROKES. Safe to say I was excited.
My story with The Strokes is interesting, to say the least. Growing up my family wasn’t privy to (what my mother likes to call) “distortion music.” We listened to a lot of R&B, Pop, Hip Hop and most importantly, Bollywood. But once I hit 14, I was able to branch out and I stumbled upon the treasure trove that was alternative rock, and with that I was introduced to the wonderful world of The Strokes.
I still remember the first time I listened to Is This It? I was coming home, a freshman in high school and a friend had suggested that I listen to them. Safe to say I was PLEASANTLY surprised. The tonality, the lyricism and the….organized noise was something that was so appealing to me. I quickly became sucked in, and since then The Strokes have been in constant rotation.
I’ve watched MTV performances and video essays upon video essays and boy do I know a thing or two about the nepo baby, Julian Casablancas himself, but even as my love (and hate?) for the group grew, I was always resigned to the fact that I was born a bit too late to ever see them live.
I’m glad I have a habit of being wrong, because then Reality Awaits was released and I was jumping for joy at the prospect of a new tour. Plans were made, tickets were bought, and I ideated about the perfect concert outfit.
The Reality Awaits show was the first time I was ever in Charlotte, and boy was it amazing. The amphitheater itself was huge, blowing my expectations out of the water! The spacious lawn was lovely as well, allowing us a great view of the stage. Merch lines were efficient and were also highly affordable! All the tee-shirts were $45, aside from a few. There was also an $80 hoodie, along with a $100 hoodie and a tote bag for $25, but I personally walked away with a shirt! Each design was distinct, unique and fun.
Image Credit: Priyal Sanathara
We arrived into the first opener’s (Promiseland) set, which we unfortunately didn’t catch much of, but we were able to get the entire set of the second opener, Geordie Greep, a UK based jazz rock fusion musician. He played for about half an hour or so with an incredible band! The instrumentalists were all extremely talented, and I loved the jazz fusion. Where I had an issue was with the lyricism, it felt like…bad slam poetry frankly, and there was no way for my friends and I to distinguish between songs, so once we got to the half hour mark, the music felt less like music and more like noise. It wasn’t my favorite act, but it got me even more hype for The Strokes!
Finally it was time, the lights dimmed, we got cozy and excited and The Strokes came on. Their set was amazing, perfectly balanced between songs off of their older works (Is This It?) and also songs from their new album (Reality Awaits). It was funny honestly, you could easily tell when a song was off of Reality Awaits, the autotune made it glaringly obvious. They kicked off their show with “Lonely In The Future,” starting off strong with one of the hit songs off of the new album. The whole setlist was as follows:
Image Credit: Priyal Sanathara
Main Act:
“Lonely in the Future”
“Hard to Explain”
“Going Shopping”
“Juicebox”
“Someday”
“Bad Decisions”
“Take It or Leave It”
“Call It Fate, Call It Karma”
“Dine N’Dash”
“You Only Live Once”
“One Way Trigger”
“Automatic Stop”
“Going to Babble On”
“Last Nite”
“The Adults Are Talking”
“Reptilia”
Nikolai himself introduced Reptilia, which had me giggling and screaming for more, as for most of the show, Julian had been doing the talking. Later on in the encore though, he’d hand the mic to Fab, who gave us a really inspiring sentence denouncing AI. The encore was one of the longest that I’ve ever had the pleasure of seeing! They played a total of five songs, and thank goodness they did because I had been hoping that they’d play songs that they had glossed over in the main act.
The Encore:
“What Ever Happened?”
“Tyrants of the Mellow Moon”
“Is This It”
“Threat of Joy”
“Ode to the Mets”
This was all in all a great show, and I hope that I’ll be able to see them again in the near future!