The Strokes releases Warren Fu’s puppet video after Saturday Night Live
The Strokes has released a Warren Fu video for Lonely in the Future, using handmade puppets from the Spitting Image team. Inspired by Genesis’ Land of Confusion, the clip gives the musicians and other public figures puppet counterparts. It follows the group’s fifth Saturday Night Live appearance and accompanies music from its July album Reality Awaits.
Arts··Evening
Warren Fu directs the band’s new puppet clip
The Strokes released a music video for Lonely in the Future following its Saturday Night Live appearance. Warren Fu directed the production, which uses puppets.[1], [2]
Fu has worked with the group for nearly twenty years. The handmade figures come from the team behind Spitting Image, a British satirical television programme. The musicians themselves appear as puppets alongside other familiar faces. Genesis’ Land of Confusion video, another collaboration with Spitting Image, supplied the inspiration for the visual approach.[1]
Smalls and Camp appear as handmade figures
The clip includes puppet versions of Chris Smalls, co-founder of the Amazon Labor Union workers’ organisation, and comedian and political commentator Lee Camp. Both appeared at the group’s homecoming show at Flushing Meadows Corona Park the previous month. That concert drew 40,000 people. The video arrived after the band’s fifth appearance on Saturday Night Live, where it played Lonely in the Future and Going Shopping.[1]
Reality Awaits follows sessions with Rick Rubin
The songs belong to Reality Awaits, released in July as the band’s first album in six years. Producer Rick Rubin began the sessions with the musicians in Costa Rica; they later met elsewhere around the world to finish it. The collaboration follows their work together on the 2020 album The New Abnormal. Actor Walton Goggins joined the television performance of Going Shopping after appearing in that song’s video.[1]
