By Natalie Schack, News Correspondent
When The Strokes’ lead singer Julian Casablancas released his enigmatic, one-and-a-half-minute preview this summer for Phrazes for the Young, his first Strokes-less album, it was kind of a big deal. Made as a video teaser for Casablancas’ solo album released Nov. 4, it was complete with awesome images of spaceships turning into moons, lava turning into traffic jams, and other self-consciously poignant commentaries on society typical of today’s rock star-cum-sage.
It’s had to say what kind of expectation the preview garners ‘- it’s epic ’90s-esque synth psychedelic rock over an arbitrary video collage, but in the most awesome of ways. This, it seemed to say, was going to be the bomb, as the young people enjoy saying.
Then the first single, ’11th Dimension,’ came out. Then the album in its entirety. And because this is really the only way to describe it, it was all a little, well, disappointing.
Perhaps the expectations made from the preview were just too disparate from Phrazes itself. The mysteriousness and climactic build in the music featured in the preview are not typical of the type of music in the album. I thought it would be a little less disco and a little more broody. A little more ’70s-futuristic-movie-climax scene, and a little less ’80s-apple-computers. A little more enigmatic and arbitrary and a little less trivial.
The sheer unexpectedness of it makes it almost hard to assess, with disco synth keyboards broken up with equal parts meaty guitar breaks and frenetic digital DOS-esque sound freakouts.
The sixth track, ‘Glass,’ (featured in the weird, inexplicable preview video collage) has fantastic instrumentals. Sadly, instead of enhancing that musical awesomeness, Casablancas vocals were plopped on top like dollops of whipped cream on pepperoni pizza:’ A bit misplaced and, sometimes, just downright confusing. It turns out that distinctly whiskey-sweet, smokey-smooth voice that has spoken to so many NYC grunge revival enthusiasts of the past decade is a little out of place in the digital orchestra Casablancas attempts to explore on Phrazes.
The song ‘4 Chords of the Apocalypse,’ which starts with a deep, melancholy organ and moody vocals, takes such a sharp turn into a Deep South sound, it’s hard to keep one’s head from spinning. Wait, ’80s? Southern? Synth? Where are we?
Genre boundaries were made to be broken, yes, and it seems that all over the musical board, shoegazers are getting bored with a steady view of their own feet.
But Casablancas’ stuff sounds a little forced, odd, and a little boring. At the very least, straying from the road most traveled should keep listeners intrigued. Chaos ought to always be interesting.
In Casablancas’ defense, it’s going to be hard to shake off the audience’s preconceptions that come along with having been frontman in one of the most cultishly iconic bands of the 21st century youth generation. No matter how much he slaps a space-age city into his album’s preview, it will be hard for listeners to think of anything but the grunge glance back to ’70s and Velvet Underground comparisons that made the Strokes stars. He’s Julian Casablancas:’ drunk on stage, smoking cigarettes and downing beer like the crunchy movement never happened. Rustling across stage with the I-couldn’t-care-less, apathetic cool that they’re known for. Maybe that’s it:’ Maybe Phrazes is just trying too hard. Trying too hard to be something new, edgy ‘- un-Strokes-like. That may be unfair for Casablancas who is, after all, so much more than one fifth of ‘that band that did ‘Last Nite”.
Casablancas should be applauded for trekking into unknown territory and struggling to break the confines of the his gilded pigeonhole ‘- which is more than any of the Strokes albums have done. Will Phrazes for the Young be enjoyable six months from now? Perhaps. Perhaps once the baggage of his past super rockdom has been worn down, and only this new album, this new Phrazes for the Young stands alone in listeners’ ears, it will be easier to view it objectively. There are some great moments, like the heavy syrupiness of the intro to ‘Tourist,’ or the climax of ‘Out of the Blue’ that sounds like the sounds of digitized revelry at a 21st birthday party for robots.
In general though, and right now, the best part of the whole Phrazes experience is still the one minute and thirty-seven second preview. Out of an eight-track 39.8 minute album? Oh, Julian ‘- when did you say the new Strokes album will be done?
