Julian Casablancas – Phrazes For the Young
It’s annoying, I’m sure, but I find it really hard not to compare this to this year’s other solo release by the front man of an early-noughties arch indie hipster band, Julian Plenti. Alternatively, I suppose, you could compare it to the Strokes’ last and best album, First Impressions of Earth.
In either comparison Phrazes For the Young fares really rather badly, in my opinion. It comes across as a light, eighties synth-pop facsimile of the best Strokes stuff with all the bite removed. And it certainly lacks the invention of Plenti’s inconsistent, but often very good, solo record.
To give Casablancas credit, he clearly has tried to take his music in a new direction, although unless he was intending to do this I suppose there would be little impetus to initiate a solo project in the first place. Impetus, though, is what this release seems to be rather grievously lacking, unfortunately. There’s just no zip to it. No snarl, no bite, not even any pace, it’s just sluggish and lifeless and seems to be in dire need of jump-starting.
How the hell can you call a song 4 Chords of the Apocalypse and then give it no balls at all?
Julian Casablancas – Out of the Blue
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Julian Casablancas – 4 Chords of the Apocalypse
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Early nineties hipster band? God, if only the Strokes had been around then. Mind you, with the exception of the Jackson 5, very few ten year olds make music that’s that good. ; )
I got about a minute and a half into 4 chords of the aplcalypse then I had to stop. It was just painfully bad. I won’t be wasting my precious eMusic credits on this on this evidence.
Wish the Strokes would do another album, because the Nickel Eye album that Nikolai Fraiture the bassist put out earlier this year.
I confess, I haven’t understood the hype about Casablancas. Although these two tracks aren’t terrible, I just don’t get hooked–or stroked or whatever.
Oh, DUH! Am I the last person alive who didn’t know Plenti’s alter-ego? Thank god for Google.
Erm yes, well spotted Ed, just changed that. But basically I think I agree with everything you’ve said there.
Linda, I had to be told as well. I may have been told less recently than you, but I was listening to the JP album thinking ‘gosh this sounds an awful lot like Interpol’ and then… d’oh!
I wouldn’t worry I can’t even finish my comments -’Wish the Strokes would do another album, because the Nickel Eye album that Nikolai Fraiture the bassist put out earlier this year’ was also meant to say ‘was fucking terrible.
JP album was better, and certainly an improvement on the less than impressive third Interpol album.
you clearly haven’t heard that the strokes first record is the best record like evereverever this decade then.
actually half of first impressions is pretty good. the rest is as shite as the second one.
this? this is sub-shite. this would be number seven on the bristol stool chart.
handy link for ya: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristol_Stool_Chart#Bristol_Stool_Chart
Yeah, Cows, I keep hearing that. I totally disagree though. I remember hearing that first EP and being as excited as everyone else, but then the album was a bit of a damp squib for me. Even the new recordings of songs from the EP fell kind of flat. In general I found the the title of Is This It? to be all too apt.
I assume this is the NME’s voting of the Is this it album as being the best album of the decade?! Think it galvanised a lot of people into action, but rather like The Libertines, their actual output never quite seemed to match up to the hype and column inches.
Then again my favourite album of 2001 was ‘Things We Lost in The Fire’ by Low, so what do I know… ; )
It’s not just the NME, I’ve seen it pretty high on a lot of lists, if I remember correctly. Mind you, I’m not doing a Best of the Decade list because I just can’t be arsed.
I might do a podcast with a song from each year though, although I doubt I’ll agonise over my picks all that much.
i think is this it? is fun and derivative and throwaway and all the better for it, but i’m damn sure it’s not the best album of the past ten years. as yr man says it wasn’t even the best album that year.
lists are fun though aren’t they.
That bristol chart is hideous and was the picture up top of an actual, real life curled off turd really necessary? I was wondering who would go to the lengths of photographing their shite when I realised that the toilet is clearly one of those ledge style ones that they have in Germany where the maintenance of proper bowel function is accorded the reverence usually reserved for religious rites.
Anyway, on the topic of shite, these songs are pure steaming keich.
Christ.