Nearly forty years after Genesis handed their likenesses over to British television satirists for the Land of Confusion promo, The Strokes have walked down the exact same rubberized path. To illustrate 'Lonely in the Future', taken from their album Reality Awaits, the group chose not to show up on set at all. Instead, Julian Casablancas and his bandmates commissioned the team behind Spitting Image to build grotesque foam and latex replicas of themselves, along with an assortment of personalities currently dominating modern news feeds.
Behind the camera is Warren Fu, whose history with the New York quintet stretches back through several key releases. Fu directed the visual treatments for 'You Only Live Once', 'Taken for a Fool', and 'Under Cover of Darkness', while also handling solo projects for Casablancas over the years. Here, Fu steers the puppetry into unvarnished mockery of the modern tech hierarchy. Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are shown sharing an embrace, using a taser against Mark Zuckerberg, and raising glasses in celebration of global collapse. Media proprietor Rupert Murdoch makes an appearance as well, manually doctoring headlines to reflect his personal perspective, while environmental campaigner Greta Thunberg appears behind bars.
Tycoons and political figures are not the only individuals singled out for caricature. Casablancas also uses the production to respond directly to online music critic Anthony Fantano, with whom he has traded public remarks. Inside the video, a puppet version of Fantano turns his nose up at the work of Johann Sebastian Bach, calling it not good, before panning Stanley Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey as immensely boring. The sequence acts as a clear nod to Fantano's previous coverage of Casablancas, in which the reviewer dismissed side outfit The Voidz with the phrase not good, later assigning Reality Awaits a three out of ten score and ranking it as the band's weakest studio offering. Not every cameo in the video carries an edge, however. Reverent tributes appear for producer Rick Rubin, who oversaw the recording of Reality Awaits, and the late Lou Reed, whom Casablancas has consistently recognized as a formative musical hero.
Longtime listeners will pick up on a heavy dose of self-mockery throughout the clip. The puppet members reenact classic setups from the group's earliest promos, mimicking shots from 'Last Nite', 'Reptilia', and 'You Only Live Once'. The visual references reach back to their formative years on the road, restaging fragments of their widely circulated 2002 show for the MTV2 $2 Bill series.
The arrival of 'Lonely in the Future' comes on the heels of the band's recent performance on Saturday Night Live, where they played the track beside 'Going Shopping'. That second selection has its own comedic screen heritage. Actor Walton Goggins walked on stage unannounced during the television broadcast, reprising his part from the official 'Going Shopping' video. That production borrowed its entire framework from Paul Simon's 1986 clip for 'You Can Call Me Al', placing Goggins in the deadpan role originally handled by Chevy Chase.
These detailed visual releases land right as the group wraps up a significant run through the UK and Ireland, representing their first major arena tour across the region in more than two decades. The schedule included stops in Newcastle, Manchester, and Dublin, capped by two evenings at London's O2 Arena. The lineup featured an unfamiliar face on stage, following an announcement in May that guitarist Nick Valensi would step away from touring duties. Steve Schiltz of Longwave took over guitar responsibilities for the dates. Valensi subsequently surfaced in Paris during an impromptu appearance with Duran Duran, though Casablancas has noted that the founding guitarist should return to the Strokes live lineup before long.
