Julian Casablancas: Phrazes for the Young
Julian Casablancas: Phrazes for the Young
Tuesday, 03, Nov 2009 05:01
Rough Trade, out this week.
In a nutshell...
Indie icon moves on... maybe
What's it all about?
Despite following in the footsteps of bandmates Fab, Albert and Nikolai, this is the one that the fans were really waiting for. Casting aside the shackles of leading one of the most heavily feted bands of modern times, Julian drops the sex, drugs and alcohol and goes for lyrical introspection. Don't expect this to be The Eraser, mind.
Who's it by?
Does he need any introduction? Our Julian broke onto the scene with his pals in 2001 and had us all cacking our pants in excitement. Since then, well, it's been a mixed bag. Room on Fire contained some stormers but failed to scale the same heights, while First Impressions of Planet Earth really bore the sound of a band struggling under the weight of great expectations.
As an example...
"You should be a secret, not crossing roads or highways/In the afterlife of supercities, rapidly devouring its outskirts." - River of Brake Lights
Likelihood of a trip to the Grammys
It's not out of the question, certainly. Solo albums can go either way, but there's more than a little danger that it might be up there on the basis of past glories.
What the others say
"It's a strange little album, just eight songs long but deceptively dense with ideas." - NME
"The irony is that Phrazes for the Young is so smoothed over - nearly all of Casablancas' trademark vocal roughness is airbrushed into oblivion - it instantly sounds like a plexiglass-covered museum piece." - Pitchfork
So is it any good?
It's fair to say that expectations were high for this one. Julian, being the last high profile Stroke to produce a solo record, is a famed slow burner when it comes to writing records, and, in a similar way, Phrazes for the Young is less of an adrenaline shot in the arm and instead more a set of prescription tablets. Try a few times a day and see how you get on, if you still don't feel anything, just come back for more...
Pretentious babblings aside, what that really means is that, in its electronic tinkerings and slowly-slowly refrains, Phrazes... is definitely one you should expect to stick on a repeat a few times before 'getting'. Casablancas, while as full of energy as ever, is drip-feeding his followers.
Out are the three-minute testosterone splurges that we all loved - now the focus is on teasing us in gently. Tellingly, only one track comes in at under 4.45 (the lead single, incidentally, but we'll come to that). Indeed, one of the album's highlights, Tourist, is almost unrecognisable in its tense, almost Adriatic stomp - a far cry from songs about the relative intellect of New York City Cops.
In that closing track our man laments, "I feel like a tourist out in the suburbs". It's not hard to see why. There's none of the rush of and the push of the Big Apple here. Even on the more driven, darker tones of River of Brake Lights, Casablancas is considering "the afterlife of supercities" before crying "waving goodbye, your young heart cries for you". Whether this post-apocalyptic imagery is a hint towards his creative future, or merely something he picked up while reading The Road, it all builds into layer after layer of intensity, the effects of which are enthralling.
All that said, when Casablancas pens a 'quickie', it's hard not to sit up and take notice. 11th Dimension opens with an absolute gimme for 'Air Synth Riff of the Year', before a robotic Numan-esque guitar riff rips in deliciously through the top of an addictive disco beat. While, like the rest of this record, it is undoubtedly the result of hours, days, weeks of craft, it sounds thrillingly fresh and immediate all the same. A concession to the record company? Perhaps, but, either way, it's up there with Juicebox and Hard to Explain when it comes to a sheer filthy pop high.
Other moments aren't always so effective. 4 Chords of the Apocalypse begins with an intriguing gospel feel, but never really roars off as might be hoped. Ludlow St, meanwhile, takes on an air of Asian mystique before breaking into a lazy, waltzy folk that plods far more than it intrigues.
Is This It? No, it ain't. While that doesn't make Phrazes for the Young a disappointment by any means, sometimes you can't help but wish that Julian would just blow the doors off once or twice. Instead, with none of the furious drawl that we've come to know, he invites the curious among us to enjoy an album that grows and grows but never explodes.
7/10
Stephen Jones