Julian Casablancas: here’s looking at you, kid
When The Strokes frontman Julian Casablancas stepped out on his own for a solo album, Phrases For The Young, I had many questions. Had he collapsed under the weight of his fame? What did this mean for the future of The Strokes? I asked them all and more in this feature for Eye Weekly.
The voice on the phone pauses and lets out a brief yelp.
“Oh! Sorry, my dog kind of licked the inside of my mouth. Ugh!”
In moments like these, Julian Casablancas doesn’t sound like the reportedly unhinged frontman who once carried the weight of rock ’n’ roll upon his shoulders. It’s been four years since we last saw him, and underneath the shaggy, jet-black hair and the leather jacket he’ll likely be buried in, Casablancas seems older. From his press photos, he’s become noticeably weathered since The Strokes arrived with their masterful 2001 debut, Is This It. Few fresh-faced lads have ever been hailed as the “New Kings of Rock” on the cover of Rolling Stone and not imploded under the spotlight — just ask The Vines’ Craig Nicholls.
“We were, like, indie superstars,” says Casablancas in our interview, conducted last fall. “We got as big as you can while still being somewhat under the radar. That’s kind of ideal, because you have success and people respect you, but you don’t have that over-the-top thing that sometimes destroys people.”
Casablancas is still standing, but his staying power wasn’t always so assured. This is, after all, the man who recently told Scottish national daily The Scotsman that at one point, he was drinking a bottle of vodka a day, with a few shots of Wild Turkey for good measure.
But as he explains the two-year hangover he endured after he gave up drinking, a new figure emerges: a mellow father-to-be (his wife subsequently gave birth in January) who conducts interviews with his dog curled up in his lap.
His work life is different too. Gone is the infamous perfectionist who maintained autocratic control over his band’s decisions in the studio, much to the detriment of The Strokes’ trademark gang mentality — while Fabrizio Moretti and Nikolai Fraiture share their singer’s chiselled jawline, it was their lack of creative control that forced Casablancas’ bandmates into a slew of side projects.
Before they agreed to share more of the creative duties inside the band, Casablancas was the relentlessly creative mind behind The Strokes’ magic. So when he began work on their fourth LP, Casablancas found himself with fully formed songs that wouldn’t fit with the band’s new collaborative mindset.
“If I had an idea I thought was cool, but I didn’t know which way it should go, then I would leave it for The Strokes. But if I had a vision for a song, where I knew every part that I wanted, I would just do it myself. This was my chance to do stuff I couldn’t do with The Strokes. It’s hard to get five people to agree on something, so we usually don’t end up doing anything crazy.”
The result of this freedom is Phrazes For the Young, on which Casablancas applies a futuristic, synth- washed coating to his familiar brand of propulsive, guitar-driven pop. The heavy keyboard presence comes in obvious defiance of The Strokes’ steadfast refusal to record anything the five of them couldn’t replicate onstage.
Phrazes sees Casablancas diving headlong into more mature lyrical terrain where he dared only dip a toe on 2006’s First Impressions of Earth. The contemplative themes are a far cry from the “12:51” imperative that sums up much of The Strokes’ early material: “Fuck going to that party.”
Exorcising demons never sounded so joyous, as Casablancas laments the passage of time on “Left & Right in the Dark,” and atones for his drunken, tyrannical behaviour over the polyrhythmic shuffle of “Out of the Blue.”
And then there’s Casio-jamming lead single “11th Dimension,” the kind of party anthem that First Impressions sorely lacked.
The album’s most arresting moment is “Glass,” a spacey synth-pop ballad written for his wife Juliet’s birthday that owns up to the vulnerability of being in a meaningful relationship. A sweeping, emotional statement, it’s unlike anything The Strokes have ever done, yet Casablancas downplays the notion that he aimed to break away from his celebrated nonchalance.
“People have been, like, ‘Oh, it sounds so different.’ It sounds like a departure because it’s very keyboard-heavy. If it was a Strokes song, I would have played it on guitar and it probably wouldn’t have sounded like that.
“Part of me feels like I could have easily Strokes-ified the songs, and people would have just been, like, ‘Oh right. Yeah, that’s just a Strokes song, whatever.’”
Under different circumstances, Phrazes For the Young could be a bold first step on a new career path, but Casablancas reveals he has concrete plans to return to his day job. Summer festival dates have been lined up and, while their ringleader is on tour, the rest of The Strokes have begun tracking at Manhattan’s Avatar Studios with producer Joe Chiccarelli.
The singer was short on details about the new material, but says he’s open to exploring new sounds. He’ll just have to clear it with his bandmates first.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if we had some keyboards in there. But that’s up to them really. Now that they hear [my] record, they might like some of it.”
The Strokes closed out the decade on a high note, with Is This It landing in the top 10 of nearly every list imaginable. Casablancas is forthcoming about his goals for their much-delayed new album, now slated for a January 2011 release.
“The goal is to go all the way — not just to be The Velvet Underground, but [to sound as though] The Velvet Underground were as popular as The Rolling Stones. So I still feel motivated to complete my....” Casablancas pauses. “The word legacy sounds so weirdly self-absorbed and serious. But if we’re gonna do something positive, I still feel like I’m in the process of trying to achieve it. I’m not at the point where I can sit back and say, ‘Yup, high five. Mission accomplished.’”
