In 2002, the Strokes played their song "Take It or Leave It" on "The Late Show With David Letterman". The performance was so incredible it almost seems unfair. In it, a 23-year old Julian Casablancas manhandled his mic stand, eyed the camera with a hypnotic mix of rage and anxiety, and tugged at his jacket as if he was about to burst. At one point, Casablancas swatted his mic down and left the stage in a huff only to return exactly as guitarist Albert Hammond, Jr. wrapped up a brief solo. Chaos; control. At the end of the song, the singer tripped, completely wiped out in the middle of the stage, and somehow ended up even cooler for it. The "Letterman" blitz showed the Strokes at full tilt-- a rock band that set the pace for what a rock band should look, sound, and feel like in a new millennium.
In 2009, a 31-year-old Julian Casablancas played his solo song "11th Dimension" with a band that wasn't the Strokes on "The Tonight Show With Conan O'Brien". The performance just seemed unfair. In it, the singer had no mic stand, eyed the camera as if he were scared and/or lost, and hunched through some of the song like he was trying to hide himself. At one point, he awkwardly pretended to roll some dice. During an atrocious circus-organ solo, Casablancas just idled in the middle of the stage. There was no chance of him falling over because he barely moved.
Perhaps it's unfair to gauge Casablancas against his younger self, but this is a star whose entire currency is based on a youthful brand of Lower East Side punk rebellion that's too cool to actually rebel. Considering the uncertain future of the Strokes-- "a band is a good way to break up a friendship," said Casablancas in a recent interview-- and the fact that the group's last album, 2006's First Impressions of Earth, was something of a shit sandwich, there's more riding on the singer's solo bow than he'd probably like to admit.
Phrazes for the Young is a jumble of contradictions. The music and artwork is steeped in 1970s and 1980s tropes yet also vaguely futuristic. The words are apocalyptic, depressing, and sometimes worthy of a zen self-help manual, and while there are only eight songs, this thing seems to go on forever. The "Conan" performance was not a momentary blunder-- this album is overstuffed with production do-dads, yet disappointingly devoid of anything coming close to the sort of tossed-off brilliance this guy used to come up with during an afternoon nap.
The title of Phrazes for the Young was based on a series of Oscar Wilde one-liners called Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young. Among the witticisms are gems like, "Pleasure is the only thing one should live for. Nothing ages like happiness," and "In all unimportant matters, style, not sincerity, is the essential. In all important matters, style, not sincerity, is the essential." But instead of continuing with Wilde's flighty "words of wisdom," Casablancas takes the "from on high" elder statesman attitude but ditches any and all traces of humor. So we get a batch of anti-pleasure, anti-happiness parables that are often too sincere for their own good.
Opener "Out of the Blue" has Casablancas reeling off a list of downers-- sadness, bitterness, anger, vengeance-- before settling with premature nostalgia: "All that I can do is sing a song of faded glory," he admits. Meanwhile, "Left & Right in the Dark" is even more dire as the singer offers lines like, "We're in a race against time, and time might be winning," before imploring the world at large (or is it himself?) to "Wake up! Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!" Here's another Wilde phrase worth re-reading: "Dullness is the coming of age of seriousness."
Produced by Jason Lader (Rilo Kiley, Maroon 5) and Mike Mogis (Bright Eyes), the album is comically slick and bouncy when it's not offering five-minute industrial-synth clusterfucks ("River of Brakelights") or slow-motion dirges ("Tourist"). Broken free of the stylistic constraints that come with the Strokes, Casablancas makes the classic rookie solo mistake of stuffing his songs with everything in the studio while never stepping back and realizing that a six-minute, country-synth historical lament in honor of Manhattan's Ludlow St. may be a few twangy guitar solos and plodding hooks too much.
The record fares best when channeling Cyndi Lauper or the Eurythmics while keeping the tempo close to jumpy. Offstage, "11th Dimension" pumps along with endearing silliness, even if Casablancas claims he's stuck "on the frozen surface of a fireball" on the track. And the gorgeous electro ballad "Glass" finds something lovely amidst a world sadly insulated by bulletproof windows.
The irony is that Phrazes for the Young is so smoothed over-- nearly all of Casablancas' trademark vocal roughness is airbrushed into oblivion-- it instantly sounds like a plexiglass-covered museum piece. At their best, the Strokes had no trouble adding spontaneity to their meticulously arranged pop-rock songs. Phrazes leaves no room for such spur-of-the-moments. And, when coupled with Casablancas' often-suffocating, old-timer sentiments, the record allows itself only brief glimmers of life. "The ages live in history through their anachronisms," wrote Wilde in his Phrases and Philosophies. And, at this rate, this one-time wunderkind risks becoming little more than an emblem of the past if he can't figure out how to harness the present once again.
