The Strokes Debut ‘Falling Out Of Love’ on Colbert Without Nick Valensi

The Strokes have given their new single Falling Out Of Love its first live airing on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and they did it without guitarist Nick Valensi.

The performance came just days after the New York band unveiled Falling Out Of Love, the follow-up to lead single Going Shopping, from their seventh album Reality Awaits, due out June 26 via Cult Records/RCA. pre-order here

Last night, May 14, Julian Casablancas delivered the song through a vocoder effect while the rest of the group played under low, moody lighting, letting the track’s slow-build tension do most of the work. It was a neat piece of late-night staging, though one shaped by an absence the band had already acknowledged earlier in the day.

Valensi was said to be taking a temporary break ahead of the band’s upcoming world tour. The Strokes did not offer any further explanation, but they did say 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 has deep roots in the same New York scene that helped shape The Strokes in the early 2000s. He went on to front Longwave, the band behind the albums Endsongs in 2000 and The Strangest Things in 2003, records that place him squarely in the orbit of the era The Strokes came out of, even if he’s usually been a figure at the edge rather than the center of the story.

The timing of all this matters. The band’s tour begins with a Bonnaroo set on June 2, before running across the US from June through September. Their European dates start with a major show at London’s O2 on October 6, followed by stops in Newcastle, Manchester and Dublin later that month. For British fans, it marks the group’s first full tour on home shores in 20 years.

Tickets for remaining UK and European dates are available here, and North American tickets are here.

NME recently gave Going Shopping three stars, writing that it “doesn’t feel bold” but also “does avoid playing anything safe.” The review added: “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,” before landing on the sharper assessment that “perhaps even he would admit that The Strokes are better than this.”

That release arrived after the band’s second Coachella set in April, where they paired the performance with a politically charged montage that called out the CIA and the US government, highlighted the destruction of universities in Iran, and referenced accusations surrounding the death of Martin Luther King Jr.