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.

Missing Screenplay, Men With White Hair, Norwegian Producers

"But, what is it, what does it mean, to be loved by the French?"

Diskjokke Staying In
Lindstrom Another Station (Todd Terje Remix)

This week's episode of Bored to Death (the HBO series' third, titled The Case of the Missing Screenplay - coincidentally also the working title of Transformers 2) featured bit parts from film director Jim Jarmusch (loved by the French, subject of a documentary screening at the Festival du Nouveau Cinema), a timely Roman Polanski joke (the writing of which would have pre-dated the director's most recent troubles in Switzerland, where he's currently being held without bail - thank you, Zeitgeist!), a mixed bag of Jungian & Freudian psychotherapy, and Oliver Platt as the editor of GQ and rival of Ted Danson's George character. Now that the big American cable channels have decided to embark upon becoming broadcasters of sometimes culturally relevant and well-written (if not that, at least well-meaning) fare, their core, traditional audience of horny teenage boys* might feel left out. Sensing the (wanton) need, Bored to Death gave us a gratuitious display of the breasts of Trieste Kelly Dunn's Sophia character to entice that core constituency. She'll return for the sixth episode. For the trainspotters who got all enthused by the Young Marble Giants in the first episode, this week's episode features Flott Flyt by Norwegian Diskjokke (Joachim Dyrdah) from his Staying In album, and not to be confused with other Norwegian producer Lindstrom. (Diskjokke had previously remixed Lindstrom's Breakfast in Heaven, though.) Above you'll find two tracks so you can compare.

Is Bored to Death funny? It's what you'd expect, which isn't a bad thing - it's mannered and it's more drama than comedy, which is fine. It's enjoyable. It doesn't try to be overly clever. Californication, which also is about a struggling alcoholic writer dealing with the aftermath of his failed relationship tries to be both clever and crude, and only succeeds in the latter.

Expecting that I'd get my weekly ration of guffaws and big laughs from Curb Your Enthusiasm's highly-touted Seinfeld reunion turned out to be a mistake - talk about one boring snoozefest. I guess it's a sign of cultural relevance and success that the tidy little dialogue trick that Seinfeld introduced to the world ("Is that a testament?" "It's a testament!" "Testament?" "Testament!") is such a standard trick in the toolkit of lazy teleplay writers everywhere, because it was really, really, really boring. Mamet-speak and Sorkin-droid, as suffocating as they can be, aren't this limited. It might be interesting to have the Seinfeld characters caught in a lengthy, looping Terry Riley-like interaction, ("Testament?" "Testament!" "Testament?" "Testament!") trapped by their own inability to escape, as each repetition becomes, as in Nietzschean eternal recurrence more and more meaningful, man. Next episode, maybe?

If you're in the US, you can catch all three episodes of Bored to Death back to back tonight on HBO starting at 9pm, or just download the torrent from EZTV, this time without the nasty HBO logo overlay.

Addenda: HBO has green-lighted Bored to Death for a second season.

*And let's be clear, the audience for HBO's Bored to Death (which it's aware of and plays off of) is a variation on that niche: horny boys in their mid to late 20s who haven't quite grown out of certain juvenilia.

HBO's Bored to Death

I watched the first two episodes of HBO's Bored to Death last night. It's the Jonathan Ames scripted half-hour comedy-drama starring Jason Schwartzman as Mr. Ames' alter-ego: a failed writer, recently dumped, scribbling here-and-there for Ted Danson's character, addicted to white wine and pot, who decides to advertise as a PI on Craigslist, against the warnings of his pal Zach Galifianakis. Ensuing complications and plot-twists, you get it. Well, it couldn't be any worse than Californication, right? Few shows could be. There were a couple of out-loud laugh moments, but it's what you'd expect from the principles - the flip-side of the loud-and-quiet Will Ferrel/Vince Vaughn dynamic - mannered performances, chuckles, and the low-level thrill of recognition. It was great to hear the Young Marble Giants in the first episode, but Christ, whoever was responsible for music supervision was playing it a little bit heavy-handed, y'know?

Download the first two episodes via torrent here
(Caveat emptor: screener files have an obnoxious HBO logo over-lay)
Bored To Death Side-Line

Young Marble Giants Brand New Life

Nancy Franklin of the New Yorker on HBO's Bored to Death.