The Strokes have announced that guitarist Nick Valensi will be taking a “temporary break” from the band’s upcoming world tour.
The New York indie greats are releasing their seventh studio album ‘Reality Awaits’ on June 26 via Cult Records/RCA (pre-order here), and last month they announced details of a tour that will take in dates in the UK, Europe, North America and Japan.
Yesterday (May 14), the band posted on their Instagram Stories to confirm that “Nick will be taking a temporary break from the scheduled tour, but we look forward to his return”.
They did not give a reason for his 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).
The Strokes’ 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.
The band have released two tracks from ‘Reality Awaits’ so far – the chic lead single ‘Going Shopping’ and the slow-burning ‘Falling Out Of Love’.
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.”
They used their second Coachella set 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.
