(photo: myspace.com)

I avoided reading any review or talk of Strokes front man Julian Casablancas’s solo debut album, Phrazes For the Young, before actually listening to the thing myself.  It was a semi-conscious decision, but one guided by premonition nonetheless.  Something in my gut told me I wasn’t going to be impressed, and looking at reviews wasn’t going to help matters any.

Almost 10 years after the Strokes ushered in the first musical revolution of the new millennium, all the hype and intrigue Casablancas and co. generated with their early singles is all but evaporated and destroyed by the plodding and seemingly endless “4 Chords Of The Apocalypse”.  You almost pray for The Rapture to come and end it all now if that means the music will stop.

All through the song, I kept saying to myself, “Is this what the great promise of The Strokes has come to?”  And therein lies the disappointment at how the potential first heard in Casablancas’s ragged and rough voice has never really been fulfilled.  His band’s forgetful output over the course of this decade never really made good on those initial promises.  Phrazes for the Young isn’t all that bad an album, but you can’t help listening to it without wondering what if:  What if expectations had been lowered?  What if there was more effort on the songs and less on the style?  I sometimes wonder if we wanted The Strokes to be more, to mean more than they were ever willing or interested in being.  Who’s to blame–the band or their audience?  That’s something to ponder, for sure, but I hasten to think on it too long, because I’m not quite sure I’d like the answer.  “11th Dimension” and the other songs on Phrazes… that stand out (I particularly like “Glass” and and “Out of the Blue”) deserve to be heard with fresh ears, and not with the hindsight of Casablancas’s recent past.  It’s obvious in the electronic leanings of these 8 songs that Casablancas is looking forward rather than back.  Maybe I should take a cue from that, too.

MP3: Julian Casablancas “Out of the Blue”
Myspace: Julian Casablancas