This decade now ebbing should have belonged to Julian Casablancas. He began it as the perfectionist architect of the most influential band for a generation. The Strokes single-handedly reinserted guitar-borne cool into cultural discourse in 2001, spawning scores of heirs. Here, they begat the Libertines and game-changers Arctic Monkeys; Stateside, Kings of Leon started off life as "the southern Strokes" before growing cancerously huge.
Their subsequent albums didn't sustain the crystalline perfection of their debut, and the Strokes' marque faded, a process possibly abetted by the creep of in-band democracy. An extended hiatus has resulted in several solo efforts (Little Joy and Albert Hammond Jr, take a bow) but now, with Casablancas's debut full-length release, the motherlode has finally arrived, a solo set that bests First Impressions of Earth, the Strokes' last outing.
Imagine the spiteful, bittersweet, coltish, punk-baroque songs of Casablancas transposed on to a retro-futurist keytar circa 1983, and you are halfway to nailing Phrazes for the Young. It is said that Casablancas picks out his melodies on keyboards, so this synthetic bent isn't new to him.
But it is disorienting, at least at first. Opener "Out of the Blue" could be a vintage Strokes tune, fizzing with Casablancian wit. But spacey keyboards and drum machines augment the hectic strumming. It softens you up for the synth melancholy of "Left and Right in the Dark", dotted with panting and dub echoes.
Plunging his songs into the neon is an audacious sidestep for Casablancas, the high priest of needling guitars. Not only that: as this short album of long songs closes in around you, Casablancas piles on the instrumentation with undisguised glee. Organs? Don't mind if he does, on the lovely, crooned "Four Chords of the Apocalypse". Melodies, counter-melodies, AOR guitar solos and key changes arrive mob-handed; with its polyrhythms, "River of Brake Lights" nods at prog-merchants Muse. "Ludlow Street", meanwhile, is a countrified lament about the gentrification of the Velvet Underground's Manhattan that recalls Rufus Wainwright. This isn't just neon-Strokes, this is the Strokes saturated, then cubed.
The triumph here is that Casablancas's songs withstand this treatment. Even with their twists and turns, they somehow remain direct. And you can even hear a great many of Casablancas's infamously smeared vocals, something missing back in the day. There is a new Strokes record in the pipeline, but it will struggle to be as much fun as this one.
