Album review: Julian Casablancas

JULIAN CASABLANCAS: PHRAZES FOR THE YOUNG
****
ROUGH TRADE, £11.74

AH, JULIAN, we've been waiting … In the three years since the last Strokes album, every other member of the band has managed a musical side project (apart from Nick Valensi, who's busy being a dad and man-about-town). Even the drummer.

Guitarist Albert Hammond Jnr was first off the blocks, and already has two solo albums under his belt. Drummer Fab Moretti relocated to California and formed Little Joy, who sound just like The Strokes with a bit of vitamin D on their skin. Even unassuming bassist Nikolai Fraiture took to fronting his own rather drab outfit, Nickel Eye, rather than be left out in the cold.

But until now, their main man has only mustered a cameo collaboration with Pharrell Williams and Santogold on the track My Drive Thru commissioned by Converse – The Strokes' footwear of choice – for an advert campaign.

Casablancas may appear easy going, but he has always been the leader of the Strokes gang. The band is his baby. He writes the songs, he determines the direction, he presides over the production. But he has hinted that this benevolent dictator approach will no longer wash with the rest of the band, so for their next, long-awaited album, The Strokes are giving democracy a go.

But with all these Strokes satellites floating around, we may be waiting a while longer, especially as it now emerges that Casablancas has been beavering away at his own album on the quiet after all – and Phrazes For The Young turns out to be easily the best, and most surprising, and most independent of the solo efforts to date.

Opening track Out of The Blue starts out with a sparkling snatch of synthesisers then quickly settles into The Strokes default setting – stridently jangling guitars going hell for leather, with Casablancas's familiar vocal drawl effortlessly jogging alongside. Then, around the half-way point, Casablancas seems to remember that it's his album and he can do what he wants – so he unleashes an unlikely Queen-style guitar break for about five seconds, then returns to his jog. It's not the most radical departure, but it sets the New Wave tone of much of what follows.

Left & Right In The Dark is the most retro and cheesy example of that style on the album, with its my-first-synthesiser arrangement and syncopated rhythms. But team that Buggles aesthetic with Casablancas's louche vocals, and it creates a celebratory dynamic. The sense of fun and joy extends right through to the single 11th Dimension, whose tinny keyboards could have been stolen from an early Madonna track or one of New Order's more unashamedly pop efforts.

The album takes an unexpected turn with 4 Chords Of The Apocalypse, on which Casablancas unearths his inner rhythm'n'blues balladeer and throws himself into its lovelorn lament. "It's more important to be nice, I guess, than be wise," he reflects. He has done soulful before but his voice has been so buried in the mix in the past that it is a pleasure to hear him cut loose here and demonstrate what a great singer, as opposed to cool frontman, he really is.

Ludlow Street is another curiosity. Ostensibly, it's a country-style amble, with bursts of demonic, dissonant banjo but also some distracting electro beats which sound like they have defected from another tune. The track is named after The Strokes' favourite Lower East Side drinking haunt. The area was a formative influence on the band, with Casablancas, in particular, displaying a prodigious capacity for booze.

These days he's sober and ambivalent, recounting blearily that "everything seemed to go wrong when I stopped drinking … as soon as I get sober I remember why I drank it all away on Ludlow Street". Then, with melodramatic overstatement, he likens the gentrification of his old 'hood to the forced eviction of native American tribes from their sacred lands. Cheer up, Julian, there's always another dive bar round the corner.

From here, the album loses its way a little. River Of Brakelights suffers from the maximalist, studio-as-playground approach. Its increasingly urgent din is more a barrage of sketchy ideas than an actual song. Glass is a big bland synth ballad, which sounds rather like A-ha in places, but is briefly enlivened by some Muse-a-like pomp guitar. Tourist drags its heels and represents a disappointing loss of momentum for an album which is otherwise alive to exploration and whose musical audacity bodes well if The Strokes do ever decide that they enjoy working together as much as they seem to flourish apart.

CRITIC'S CHOICE

Orquesta Buena Vista Social Club

Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, tonight; Music Hall, Aberdeen, tomorrow; Usher Hall, Edinburgh, 28 October

THE big stars of Cuba's Buena Vista Social Club have passed on to the big cha cha party in the sky, but their fabulous supporting musicians are still around to bring the mambo. The Orquesta includes such Buena Vista stalwarts as trumpeter Guajiro Mirabal, trombonist Aguage Ramos and guitarist Manual Galban.

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