The Strokes have played new single ‘Falling Out Of Love’ live for the first time on The Late Show – without guitarist Nick Valensi.
The New York band are releasing their seventh album ‘Reality Awaits’ on June 26 via Cult Records/RCA (pre-order here), and earlier this week, they shared ‘Falling Out Of Love’, the follow-up to lead single ‘Going Shopping’.
Last night (May 14), they gave the song its live debut on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, with frontman Julian Casablancas singing through a vocoder effect amid moody spot lighting and simmering, slow-burn intensity from the band.
One band member who was not there was Valensi, after the band revealed earlier in the day that he was taking a “temporary break” ahead of their upcoming world tour.
Watch the video here:
The Strokes did not give a reason for Valensi’s absence, but they did add that “holding down the guitar in the meantime is our old friend Steve Schiltz, who many of you will remember from the early NY days”.
Schiltz was a close associate of The Strokes in the early 2000s and became the founder of the band Longwave, remembered for their early albums ‘Endsongs’ (2000) and ‘The Strangest Things’ (2003).
Their tour kicks off with their set at Bonnaroo on June 2, before taking them around the US from June to September. Their European dates begin with a huge show at London’s O2 on October 6, while they will also be playing in Newcastle, Manchester and Dublin later that month. It will be the band’s first full tour on British shores in 20 years.
Find any remaining UK and European tickets here and North American tickets here.
NME gave ‘Going Shopping’ a three-star review and described it as a song that “doesn’t feel bold” but also “does avoid playing anything safe.”
“You couldn’t definitively place its sound on any of The Strokes’ previous six albums, but the lack of spirit and tenacity – save for a guitar solo at the end – is noticeable,” the review read. “‘If you’re better than me you don’t have to judge me’, signs off Casablancas, with an imaginary raised eyebrow. But perhaps even he would admit that The Strokes are better than this.”
The band used their second Coachella set in April to share a politically-charged montage calling out the CIA and the US government, drawing attention to universities being destroyed in Iran and accusations involving the death of Martin Luther King Jr.
