Debilitated Stroke: Julian Casablancas, 'Phrazes for the Young'

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"WHY CAN'T YOU ignore the things I did before?" asks Julian Casablancas on "Out of the Blue," the lead-off track from his solo debut, "Phrazes for the Young." It's hard to determine just how he intends that rhetorical question, but it sounds like one of the funniest lines he's ever written as well as one of the most tragic, given what he's asking you to ignore.

Casablancas is the frontman for the Strokes, the Brooklyn band that released its ballyhooed first album, "Is This It?" back in 2001. At the time, they were supposed to clear radio of all the post-grunge pop bands the way Nirvana obliterated hair metal. Of course the band couldn't deliver on such high expectations (who actually could?), and after a strong follow-up they made a mess of a third album before going on a lengthy hiatus.

So it would certainly benefit Casablancas if this album really had truly come out of the blue, with little context and no expectations, but his past is hard to ignore, especially listening to "Phrazes."

For one thing, there's that voice, a richly detached tenor that's instantly recognizable. A limited instrument, it's grown much more expressive over the years, and Casablancas conveys raised-eyebrow wryness and angry self-deprecation to his repertoire.

Then there's the music, which leans heavily on dated synths, programmed beats and processed guitars. At times, "Phrazes" sounds like it's trying to regurgitate several decades' worth of Big Apple music all at once. Of course there are the postpunk guitars, punk swagger and new wave effects that helped make the Strokes so distinctive eight years ago, but Casablancas sounds best when he's proving why this had to be a solo album. "11th Dimension" skitters around on neon synths that propel a ten-story chorus that would sound great on the radio — or, to put it a different way, radio would sound great playing this song.

Elsewhere, he sounds like ... wait for it ... a hipster Billy Joel. "4 Chords of the Apocalypse" wanders around downtown at a loping tempo, with a keyboard on the "'70s urban songwriter" setting. And "Ludlow Street" may be his "Scenes From an Italian Restaurant," a slice of New York life that ends up conflating Casablancas' alcoholism (he's since gone into recovery) with gentrification of the Lower East Side.

His cityscapes sound better on "River of Brakelights," whose perpetual-motion-machine guitar crunch feeding into its anthemic chorus. Like much of the album, it sounds like the Strokes doing the sort of thing the Strokes could never pull off. Ultimately, you can't ignore what Casablancas did before, because he just won't let you. And on "Phrazes," that's both a blessing and a curse.

Written by Express contributor Stephen M. Deusner
Photos courtesy Willams + Hirakawa