The Strokes Close Coachella By Calling Out the CIA and U.S Government
The Strokes closed out their set at the second weekend of Coachella, with a video protesting America's involvement on the International stage, including their current policy in both Iran and Gaza. The response from the crowd was immediate: a wave of applause erupted as the images played across the screens, while some fans held up peace signs and phones, trying to capture the moment. There was a noticeable energy shift in the audience, with many listeners clearly engaged by the band's bold visual statement. It was hard not to be moved; deliberately confrontational, but entirely necessary.
Frontman Julian Casablancas adopted a political tone during the Coachella set. The songwriter has long been vocal about his left-wing beliefs and closely supported Zohran Mandani’s successful run for New York mayor last year.
In reference to Justin Bieber's headline set the week before, where Bieber opened a laptop and took YouTube to watch some content, he said, “I was tempted to show up here with a laptop tonight and show you guys some of those Iranian Lego videos. Have you seen them? Really good. They’ve got more truth than your local newspapers. But they were wiped out. By YouTube, or by the government, doesn’t matter. They erased that shit. But it’s the land of the free, isn’t it?”
The band's set ended with 'Oblivius', a deep cut from their 2016 EP 'Future Present Past', performed live only once before, a decade ago. It was accompanied by a video montage featuring Omar Torrijos, Jacobo Árbenz and Jaime Roldós Aguilera, leaders described on screen as having been allegedly overthrown by the CIA. An image of Martin Luther King Jr. also appeared, alongside the on-screen statement “US Govt found guilty of his murder in civil trial.”
The montage closed with footage of American-backed violence in the Middle East, ending on the destruction of the final university in Gaza. With the screen fading to black, and the band walking off stage without so much as a goodbye.
The closing moment followed an already politically engaged appearance from the band during weekend one.
Frontman Julian Casablancas used the earlier performance on April 11 to address issues, including proposed military draft registration in the United States, which will see men aged 18-25 be automatically eligible for military draft, opposed to the current model, which is self-registration.
“You guys excited about the draft? Oh, wait, not the NFL draft,” before adding, “In six months, I think everyone who's eligible for the military has to register. You guys excited?”
“Well, I hope to lead one of the Coachella units, the sexiest unit in our proud military, I’m sure,” he added. “What in the 2026 is going on.”
Casablancas also made a wry dig at Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos by sporting a t-shirt on stage that mimicked the Amazon Prime logo, but with the word “crime” pasted in place of the company’s name.
The New York indie rock legends are soon to release their new album ‘Reality Awaits‘, their first album in six years. The record was recorded in Costa Rica with producer Rick Rubin and finished in a number of global locations. It will arrive on June 26th, and the first single, 'Going Shopping', is out now.
Alongside the album announcement, The Strokes revealed an extensive world tour taking in the UK, North America, Europe and Japan. It will be their first full tour in the UK and Ireland in over 20 years, and will see them stop by London’s O2, Newcastle’s Utilita Arena, Manchester’s Co-op Live and Dublin’s 3Arena in October.
'Going Shopping' is a cautious, measured return, the kind of first move that says a lot without fully committing. The NME put it well: "The Strokes' delicate, sun-kissed comeback single 'Going Shopping' is an item you'd try on but wouldn't buy." It's a fair verdict. There's craft here, but also a certain reluctance to fully show their hand.
Lyrically, Casablancas is as sharp and politically loaded as ever. His voice is draped in heavy, Voidz-esque autotune (The Voidz being Casablancas’ experimental solo project, known for its abrasive, effects-laden sound) as he takes aim at self-interest, late-stage capitalism, and the collective delusion that keeps us chasing “greatness” while destroying the planet in the process. The themes align neatly with his Coachella performances; a man clearly not done shouting into the void.
Yet even Casablancas needs an escape route. The song finds him fleeing to the country, only to be pulled back to the city and the numbing comfort of a mall trip. It’s at these moments he sounds most unmoored, drifting into surrealism and musing about becoming a “seven-foot starfish.” The lyrical threads deliberately blur fact and fiction, a tension echoed in the artwork itself: New York City suspended in outer space, ringed by Saturn. It’s an image that captures the song’s central tension; the world is absurd, and sometimes all you can do is go shopping.
The lyrics, then, are doing the heavy lifting; sonically, ‘Going Shopping’ struggles to keep up. The autotune, thick and unrelenting, lacks the warmth that Casablancas usually manages to retain even through layers of vocal processing. Albert Hammond Jr. and Nick Valensi’s guitars are pleasant enough, but pleasant isn’t really what The Strokes are for. Even on their breeziest tracks, ‘Someday’ and ‘Selfless’, there was an undercurrent of tension, a sense that something was at stake. Here, that urgency is largely absent. The song coasts, and coasting has never been The Strokes’ strongest gear.
You couldn’t definitively place its sound within The Strokes’ back catalogue, and that’s not nothing: after six albums, genuine stylistic ambiguity is hard to come by. But ambiguity without conviction only gets you so far. A guitar solo near the end briefly sparks to life, offering a glimpse of what the band are still capable of when they let themselves go. “If you’re better than me, you don’t have to judge me,” signs off Casablancas, with a characteristic raised eyebrow. But perhaps even he’d admit The Strokes are better than this.
Still, a single is just a single, and first moves are rarely the whole story. If the Coachella performances are anything to go by, the political fire, the pointed imagery, the sheer conviction of it all, then ‘Reality Awaits’ could be something far more urgent than ‘Going Shopping’ lets on. The world Casablancas is raging against isn’t getting any better. The Strokes, at their best, have always known how to make that rage feel like something worth listening to. June 26th can’t come soon enough.