The Strokes used their Bonnaroo headline set to push Reality Awaits a little further into the real world. According to NME, the band played Falling Out of Love in full during its June 12 set in Manchester, Tennessee, after previously giving the song a television debut in May. The set also opened with Killing Lies, the First Impressions of Earth cut that has been mostly absent from recent Strokes shows.
That is the kind of live-footage breadcrumb that matters more than another rollout teaser. Falling Out of Love is one of the two preview tracks from Reality Awaits, alongside Going Shopping, and the full Bonnaroo performance gives fans a better read on how this phase of the band functions outside the studio sheen. The official Bonnaroo site lists this year's festival for June 11-14 in Manchester, while NME's set report places The Strokes at the top of the June 12 night.
The performance arrived with Nick Valensi still away from the live lineup. Pitchfork reported in May that Valensi was taking a temporary break from scheduled Strokes dates, with Longwave frontman Steve Schiltz filling in on guitar, and NME notes that Schiltz was again handling guitar duties at Bonnaroo. For a band whose whole mythology is built on a very specific five-person chemistry, the substitution is a meaningful wrinkle. It changes the visual and live-band temperature even when the songs remain familiar.
Apple Music currently lists Reality Awaits for July 24, 2026, with nine songs and RCA Records copyright metadata; the band's official preorder hub is also live. That date gives the Bonnaroo set a slightly different charge: The Strokes are no longer just teasing a comeback LP from a safe distance. They are road-testing the strangest edges of the record in front of festival crowds, which is a more useful stress test than another clean studio clip.
NME's reported setlist also included Hard to Explain, You Only Live Once, The Adults Are Talking, Someday, Juicebox, Reptilia, Last Nite, and Ize of the World. That is a crowd-proof Strokes set on paper, but the real news is the friction around it: a new album finally coming into view, a deep cut resurfacing, and a lineup adjustment that makes the whole thing feel less automatic than legacy-headliner business as usual.