Julian Casablancas: Paradise, Boston, MA, 1/8/10 (Boston Phoenix)

Photo: Julian Furtak

“Hey, it’s Friday night, alright!” At mid-point of the set, the crowd at the Paradise was going wild. The usually reticent, erstwhile Strokes frontman Julian Casablancas reacted to the enthusiasm of the sold-out crowd, whom had braved the elements for Casablancas’s first night of his first solo US tour. But just as soon as he began sharing in the revelry of his followers, he pulled back, rejoinding his Friday night fever: “But you know, now that I think about it, I haven’t had a day job in a long time, so I don’t even know why I would care.”

Wha?

Luckily for Casablancas, his audience didn’t care either — partly because they couldn’t make out what he was saying amidst the din between songs, but mostly because they were neatly divided into two groups. First, there were the dudes who were there to whoop it up and have a good time (part of the old maxim that once you establish yourself early on in your show-biz career as being an inarticulate drunk — as Julian did during his early blotto Strokes days — you will forever have an inexplicable following of drunk party dudes who will follow your every twist and turn with a holler and a raised plastic cup). And then there were the women who were there to ogle their indie-rock dreamboat. I’m guessing he could have played polka favorites in a tutu and still had everyone screaming.

Thing is, Casablancas’s solo debut, Phrazes for the Young (RCA), is a bizarre and twisted romp through sophisticated musical stylings that, especially in a live setting, sound light years away from the compact garage minimalism of early Strokes. This was evident from the first notes of the show, when Casablancas’s six-piece backing-band strolled out and proceeded to bleat the intro to Phrazes headscratcher “Ludlow Street.” When the song kicks in, it’s a drunken psych-country waltz, but the opening coda is a dark, majestic processional that wouldn’t sound out of place in an early ’70s Alejandro Jodorowsky film. When the J Man finally strolled out, he struck an odd figure as an artist who has always liberally borrowed from ’80s iconography, Casablancas is finally hitting the Mad Maxfashion period that so many artists of the time inevitably hit. In worn leather pants, a bullet belt, and an oversized weather-beaten biker jacket, he seemed eons away from the baleful early-20s deer-in-headlights that hit the big time nine years ago. As he shadow-danced his way through the dense soup-arrangements from Phrazes, you could see Casablancas finally starting to show his true freak flag.

Of course, the two unscreamed questions on everyone’s minds tonight were “Is this solo thing real?” and “When are the Strokes coming back?” Honestly, on the strength of tonight’s show, I’m not sure why he would bother going back to the Strokes. Casablancas seems far more engaged in his own intricate (and almost downright capital-P prog) material, like the intense “River of Brakelights” and “Left & Right in the Dark” (both early set highlights).

The set was brief (under an hour!) and contained nary a mention of his former (?) band; he allowed himself to pull entirely from the reservoir of his current album. Well, maybe that isn’t entirely true: near the end of the set-proper, Casablancas emerged with just his keyboardist on electric piano. Announcing the next tune as “a cover version,” he began a slow and searing run-through of “I’ll Try Anything Once,” a tune that surfaced (with different lyrics and a full-band arrangement) as “You Only Live Once,” the opener of the Strokes’First Impressions of Earth (2006). His vocals made clear how far he’s come since those days when he’d shroud himself in layers of fuzz. Stepping out into the blue spotlight, he transformed what could have been a lounge-lizard moment into something more blissful, his voice morphing from phrase to phrase, from a smoky Cohen-esque rasp to earnest yearning to screaming abandon. One thing made clear by this foray into self-reliance: we haven’t seen the last, nor even the whole, of Casablancas.

Julian Casablancas (Boston Phoenix, 1/05/10)

ART IN A CAGE "I could have done something that sounds like the Strokes, and maybe I should have. It would have been the smart thing to do — if I were a businessman."

Julian Casablancas is in control, for better or worse. Better, in the sense that he is finally seeing the release of his debut solo album, Phrazes for the Young (RCA), in which he steps out of the stripped-down style of the Strokes — his blockbuster unit for the past decade — and unveils a kaleidoscopic world of lush dreamscapes, arpeggiated classicism, and haunting balladry. Worse, in that for this guardedly reserved frontman, having your name on the marquee means it’s that much easier to second-guess yourself.

“To be honest, with this record I wanted to go out there, musically, but I was scared,” he says. “Scared that people would think that it was this weird vanity solo avant-garde-wanna-be thing. And I think that, actually, I was wrong.”

Wrong or not, the resulting album is a bold, baroque masterstroke from a restless musician temporarily freed from the democratic constraints of bandhood. Within the Strokes, Casablancas always struck an odd pose between screaming abandon and shrinking discomfort. Now, he finds himself closely evaluating his musical moves so as not to repeat himself.

“I could have probably done something that sounds like the Strokes — that I could have done easily. And maybe I should have. I’m saying that somewhat sarcastically, but success-wise, it would have been the smart thing to do — if I were a businessman.”

Better for us that he’s not. If a typical Strokes song is a Tetris-like fit of guitar, bass, drums, and crooning vocals with nary an ounce of air to spare, then Phrazes is like a prolonged exhalation — an explosion of styles and textures that maintains an organic flow. “4 Chords of the Apocalypse” has a loping gentleness that tips its hat to Motown, but it also includes a piercing lead break that sounds like Brian May and Tom Scholz in a laser battle. “Glass” begins like a trip-hop tiptoe through the clouds, only to dive-bomb into a spiral of classical trills and fractal runs of guitar and organ. Lead single “11th Dimension” begins tidy and spry and lo-fi (imagine a Miami Sound Machine demo) before spinning into a vortex of triumphant guitars and clobbering drums. The constant is Casablancas’s instantly recognizable voice, once buried beneath chugging garage chords and muffled in distortion, now clarion clear and gliding atop each track.

Casablancas was just as much in control of the Strokes’ lauded 2001 debut, Is This It(RCA), as he is with Phrazes — he didn’t just write all the songs, he wrote the solos, too. “I had a specific idea of how I wanted it to sound. I wanted the vocals to sound really messed-up. But with this record, the vocals are doubled and more confident, and I found a way to make them work with things like polyrhythmic drums and melodic keyboards.”

The remaining task, then, is to sell this new Julian to an audience that simply wants to hear “The Modern Age” the way it did 10 years ago. The Strokes haven’t been active since settling into a self-described “hibernation” following the tepid public reception of their third LP, 2006′s First Impressions of Earth — a record that marked a clear departure from Is This It‘s indie strum and also suggested a band in need of a break. Take “Ask Me Anything”: three minutes of nothing but vocals, Mellotron, and a chorus that repeated “I’ve got nothing to say” into infinity.

This time around, Casablancas has plenty to say. Phrazes is bursting with ideas — lyrical, musical, conceptual. His initial concept for the tour (which hits the Paradise this Friday) was a Disney-esque extravaganza, but that didn’t prove feasible save for a short November residency at LA’s Downtown Palace Theatre. “It’s like when you go see a play, and the scene opens with a mountain range, or Roman columns, or whatever: it’s kind of exciting and fun for about five minutes, but then it wears off and it’s boring. The idea was to create random sets, a different one for each song. So a mountain range, and then for the next song you’re underwater, and then you’re in an ice world.”

For Casablancas, his theatrical ambitions make the same demands as the Strokes’ carefully maintained austerity — it’s just more music to create. “When I first started doing this, just messing around, everyone was like, ‘Play guitar, man!’, and I just didn’t want to. That wasn’t fun for me; it wasn’t the dream. I guess I always had a kind of fantasy of being, you know, a modern composer — not like I can really pull that off or anything.”

Yet with Phrazes he’s not so wide of the mark — it’s a leap of musical sophistication that’s far-reaching but not pretentious. “This would have never flown with the Strokes — the rest of the guys would have been like, ‘Uh, let’s just play the songs, dude.’ ” And should the new Julian alienate devotees who wish he’d simply concentrate on reviving the Strokes in 2010 (they do have some summer-festival dates scheduled and a fourth album planned), so be it. “I’m just trying to come up with something different and weird but good. And who knows? Maybe I went about it a little wrong — but whatever.”

JULIAN CASABLANCAS | Paradise, 967 Comm Ave, Boston | January 8 at 9 pm | $20 | 617.562.8800 or www.thedise.com

Julian Casablancas: Prep rally (Boston Phoenix, 1/05/10)

Much of the early backlash that followed the Strokes’ meteoric rise had to do with the idea that a ’00s punk revival couldn’t be spearheaded by a band of moneyed prep-school twerps — as if boarding school and rock stars didn’t go together like marmalade and scones. Whether we’re talking about Julian Casablancas meeting several future Strokes at Switzerland’s Institut Le Rosey or a young John Mellor (later Joe Strummer) plotting his assault on the bourgeoisie at the prestigious Freemen’s School in Surrey, a number of rock’s most potent powder kegs have started off in crested blazers. Here are just a few of the preppiest insurrectionists:

FREDDIE MERCURY OF QUEEN | The young Farrokh Bulsara blossomed as a musical prodigy when he left the family nest in Zanzibar to study at St. Peter’s boarding school in Mumbai. It was here that he started his first band (the Hectics) and began calling himself Freddie, planting the seeds for the persona that would front one of the most successful (and flamboyantly awesome) acts of all time.

BRUCE DICKINSON OF IRON MAIDEN | At heart, boarding schools are about escape — which in young Master Bruce’s case meant goodbye to Nottinghamshire and hello to Northamptonshire’s Oundle, as well as to the school war-games society that he co-founded. A fitting pursuit for the future belter of “Die with Your Boots On” and “The Trooper.”

TIM AND NEIL FINN OF SPLIT ENZ/CROWDED HOUSE | Boarding school can be as brutal as it is posh — in his native New Zealand, at Auckland’s Sacred Heart College, Tim Finn set a school record by receiving 35 canings in one year. He passed on his defiant spirit to his younger brother, Neil, and the two would go on to form two of NZ’s most exciting bands. Both have spent decades using their musical careers to benefit various social causes — no doubt in large part because Tim understands what it means to be at the other end of the lash.

Listomania! Top 10 Songs of 2009 (Boston Phoenix, 12/21/09)

Other Phoenix writer picks can be found HERE!

1. The Horrors, “Scarlet Fields” (from Primary Colours)
2. Lady Gaga, “Dance In The Dark” (from The Fame Monster)
3. Julian Casablancas, “Glass” (from Phrazes of the Young)
4. Crippled Black Phoenix, “Rise Up and Fight” (from 200 Tons of Bad Luck)
5. Fuck Buttons, “The Lisbon Maru” (from Tarot Sport)
6. Municipal Waste, “Wolves Of Chernobyl” (from Massive Aggressive)
7. Pissed Jeans, “False Jesii Part 2″ (from King Of Jeans)
8. Lightning Bolt, “Sound Guardians” (from Earthly Delights)
9. Shakira, “Loba” (from She Wolf)
10. Spinnerette, “All Babes Are Wolves” (from Spinnerette)

2009 was a year that saw so many musical areas blossoming like never before, after years of retrenchment. This year, the metal was metal-y-er, the pop was poppier, the noise-duos were noise-duo-y-er, and the shoegaze/mope-goth was more shoegaze/mope-goth-y. “See yourself/your image in the eyes of someone else” goes the pre-chorus of The Horrors’ “Scarlet Fields”. I’m guessing that the band took their own advice, as their new long-player Primary Colours found them remaking themselves from 3rd-tier splatter-garage into an actual second coming of MBV. As we all spent 2009 attempting to sort out the real from the imaginary and idealized in our culture’s looking glass, our music continued to replicate the sound of the shards of the mirror hitting the floor. - Daniel Brockman

Julian Casablancas: Phrazes For The Young (Boston Phoenix, 11/3/09)

Someday, a great rock film will be made. The opening shot is of a wasted rock star, bejeweled and clad in the finest leather, with white panthers circling the living room of his Parthenon-esque manse as he hits PLAY on a comically large reel-to-reel. As the tape spins, the camera pulls back down endless hallways symmetrically lined with Greek statues, disappearing into a lux interior horizon.

Echoing endlessly as it does so is a plaintive voice bathed in swirlingly synthetic keyboards; it’s soothing-yet-disturbing, eventually arcing into labyrinthine fugues at once Baroque and modern. The rhythms are jittery and endless, locking in with the synthesizers in an economical package of sound that snugly fits with the warm croon of the vocals while at the same time making lyrical inquiries pointless.

The rest of the film will be a flashback to the story of this rock star, and his name will be Julian Casablancas: his childhood of opulence and jet-setting wealth, boarding schools and modeling agencies; his adolescence of garage rock, instant fame, and inebriated abandon. But all of that stuff will be of little consequence. At the end, after his inevitable untimely death, all anyone will care about will be the stately grandeur of the opening (and closing) music coupled with the star’s eternal blank stare: unknowable, unfathomable, and ultimately tragic. We’ll have to wait for the movie; fortunately the soundtrack is already here.