Dollar Store Hallucinations: Julian Casablancas' Phrazes for the Young

"Why don't I move to LA? Take my plants, record an album, start a new life?
Orso's closing, but that's okay."

Julian Casablancas Out of the Blue
Julian Casablancas 11th Dimension (Extended Version)

It's a bit uneven as an album, but there are enough solid moments that I'd probably shell out the $9.99 (or whatever it is that a CD costs) for Julian Casablancas' Phrazes for the Young. With production duties handled by Jason Ladder (who once twiddled knobs for bad-haircut Jeep rockers Maroon 5 and Jenny Lewis) as well as Mike Mogis (one of those Saddle Creek types - blame him for the countrified moments, I guess), Mr. Casablancas' premiere outing as a solo artist is a trippy, slightly claustrophobic ride through roller-rink synthesizers, ELO circa Time chord progressions, and half-baked ideas that is over-all, pretty damn charming.

Your Easy-Pocket Reference Points...
The dominant mode here is theatrical studio fuckery. It's not overwrought genre-fuckery like The Bees who sometimes get it right (Chicken Payback) and sometimes get it terribly wrong (Travelin' Man), and it's not as polished as Jason Schwartzman's Coconut Records, which sometimes errs so poorly and frequently you do think, "Oh yeah, Los Angeles, Maroon 5, guys with too much money who really like Phoenix." I have to admit that even I loathe them, the closest reference I can make is to Of Montreal, as busy, as many textures and ideas, albeit thankfully more tasteful. Let's hope the much-hyped Casablancas stage show is more than him dancing around with tin-foil flute playing woodland creatures and other dollar-store hallucinations.

At its worst, the confusion becomes a bit much in mid-album song River of Brakelights, which has no discernible hooks, just a series of proggy keyboard lines and a chorus that sounds like the desperate chants of a robot assembly-line moments before exploding due to over-work. At it's best, you have the two songs above... Album-opener Out of the Blue is pretty damn fun, gradually developing into a supremely hooky song over a 4/4 drum-machine demo rhythm. 11th Dimension is the single - great guitar hooks, that aforementioned roller-rink syntehsizer line, and the busy hyper-produced guitar-sound that popped up on the Strokes' 12:51.

Now a short-time LA resident and loving the weather (as his bandmate's father once sang, "It Never Rains in Southern California"), Mr. Casablancas is performing 3 times in Los Angeles and once in San Francisco before embarking on a short tour. No Montreal or (more surprisingly) New York dates announced yet, but he will be in Vancouver at The Commodore Ballroom on November 23rd.

Pan-Atlantic Pop & Dancefloor Dilemmas

John McEnroe & Bjorn Borg shake it up

Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark Genetic Engineering
New Musik On Islands

I remember being really struck by OMD's Dazzle Ships album when I listened to it a couple of years ago - the typically English fascination with World War II and skewed glances at industrial progressivism (that continues to this day, think of British Sea Power) in a concept album were more appealing than Pink Floyd to me. British pop musicians from, let's say the late 1960's on to the mid 80's, loved to use children's voices in their singles for some reason. Here are two fine examples. Genetic Engineering was a single, but (strangely) New Musik's On Islands wasn't.

Funk is not just a sound, it's a taste. A taste of the good life.

Nick Straker Band A Little Bit of Jazz
The Gap Band You Dropped a Bomb on Me
Jungle Brothers Because I Got It Like That (Ultimatum Remix)
Michael Zager Band Let's All Chant
Ultramagnetic MC's Traveling at the Speed of Thought (Hip House Club Mix)

Nick Straker left New Musik to form his own project, which turned out to be more successful. For the longest time, I thought that the Nick Straker Band was a black R&B group, instead of a project fronted by a white kid from London who used to play in a wedding band. The Gap Band was, however, a black R&B group and proved their mettle in this fine display of special-effect-laden funk, as well as the bajillion other amazing songs they wrote and recorded over the course of their lengthy career.

I'm sure most of you recognize the Electric Light Orchestra song sampled on this remix of the Jungle Brothers. Best song to do the running man to, in my opinion. (For those romantic breakdancers out there, I suggest slow running man to Soul II Soul's Back To Life.) The Michael Zager Band's is a fine enough song, although Mr. Zager reveals an unseemly fascination with Gershwin during his baroque & klezmer brass-off towards in the latter half of the song. Nonetheless, there are hand-claps, disco calls, and that stellar bass-line - which make their way into this hip-house remix of the Ultramagnetic MC's Traveling at The Speed of Thought. Was hip-house as fun a genre as I think it is, or am I just inflicted with nostalgia for the early 90's, in the same way that people a couple of years my junior love Biggie Smalls?

A final thought: I would like to call a moratorium on anyone between the ages of 18 and 34 yammering on about Erik Satie. We know: you just discovered him, you love him, Parisian Bohemian Dadaist, etc. I hope they play Gymnopédie No.1 at your funeral. Did this just get added to Concordia's FFAR 250 curriculum recently? On an Animal Collective mix-tape I missed? I still claim he invented Muzak.