Phrazes for the Young
’Tis the season of music festivals — SXSW is but a fond memory and Coachella is just around the corner as this issue goes to print. Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza and other summer happenings will follow. The festivals offer impressive (if sometimes maddeningly overlapping) schedules of performers and some aggressively compete for the same talent.
At a time when many artists seem to crave ever-changing collaborations rather than the humdrum of playing (and getting along) with a single set of band mates, the festivals create an intriguing guessing game of just who will appear where and in what configuration. Thom Yorke will play Coachella — not with Radiohead, but instead with Atoms for Peace, which includes Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea, producer Nigel Godrich, Beck drummer Joey Waronker and percussionist Mauro Refosco. Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl is also in the Indio lineup, but with Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones and guitarist Josh Homme as Them Crooked Vultures.
One of the most anticipated solo acts at this year’s Coachella festival is Julian Casablancas, otherwise the front man for The Strokes.
As most anyone listening to music in the last decade knows, The Strokes had a meteoric rise to fame after the release of the band’s critically acclaimed debut album, Is This It, in 2001. The New York-based band — with Nick Valensi and Albert Hammond Jr. on guitar, bassist Nikolai Fraiture and Fabrizio Moretti on drums — offered up a stripped-down, guitar-heavy sound that was largely credited with reviving garage rock in the post-punk era. The group influenced dozens of other indie bands and led an explosion of new music coming out of New York. The band’s hipster-ish good looks and canny fashion sense did nothing to detract from its massive success.
But The Strokes last album (its third), First Impressions of Earth, was released back in 2006, and, in the interim, each of the band members has taken a solo turn. Lead singer and songwriter Casablancas is the last to perform away from the group and, in other, earlier interviews, seemed reluctant to do so.
In making the leap, he composed an imaginative collection of songs for Phrazes for the Young, which was released in November. It mixes a lot of upbeat ’80s synth-pop with some dark lyrics, offers up a convincing country western ballad about New York and plays with multiple layers of instrumentation. The thing the diverse tunes seem to have most in common is that they are, for the most part, unlike The Strokes’ music.
“I approached Phrazes much like I approached early Strokes records in the sense that I had so much of it written and arranged anyway,” says Casablancas, “only this time instead of thinking in terms of a five-piece band, I was able to think in terms of completely different sounds and arrangements, which from a songwriter and producer’s point of view is exciting.”
The debut’s title is a reference to Oscar Wilde’s Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young, a series of tongue-in-cheek observations about the civilized world, such as, “The first duty in life is to be as artificial as possible. What the second duty is no one has as yet discovered,” and “The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything.”
It appealed to Casablancas because, “It’s the fantasy that you can have all the wisdom needed for life neatly packaged into one place, and I like that thought.”
“Not that Phrazes for the Young is that, by any means,” he quickly clarifies. “If anything, Phrazes was basically what 30-year-old Julian wished 15-year-old Julian read growing up. I wish I could have gotten that record and been into it and [heard] those lines.”
Using the Wilde piece as a jumping-off point pushed the songwriter to aim high on the lyrics.
“I had the name first, so the lyrics had to be of a certain intensity for them to work on a record called Phrazes for the Young, Casablancas says.
Some harsh lyrics are paired with an upbeat, rollicking rhythm, as in “Out of the Blue,” when Casablancas sings, “Somewhere along the way, my hopefulness turned to sadness ... my sadness turned to bitterness … my bitterness turned to anger … my anger turned to vengeance.”
The video for the song “11th Dimension” also includes some blackboard scribblings that seem intended as advice of a sort — “Sin is honoring desire above what you know is right,” and “Anger is weakness. Patience is strength.”
Serious language aside, Casablancas says the process of making Phrazes “was super fun, so hopefully that came out in the music.”
The musician was in the midst of a busy tour schedule — he joked that he thought he had a “Tuesday afternoon in May that I’m off” — and was about to play a hometown gig at the Fillmore New York when he spoke with Malibu Magazine.
In addition to being on the road without The Strokes — all friends of Casablancas since high school — he’s now staunchly sober. But he said sobriety hasn’t affected the way he makes music, just the amount of time he devotes to his work.
“I never used to write music when I was drinking, or whatever. After the work was done that’s how I’d celebrate, until it started creeping into the morning and then the next day and next year …” he says, trailing off. “I work more now, I have more time. … That’s pretty much the reason I stopped in the first place.”
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