Do you long for the simpler days of the clunky 10-gig iPod? Bush and Cheney’s malfeasance? Is This It on CD? A tangle of Ethernet cords? A clean-cut Tiger Woods? Well, last night, 14 days into the new decade, a sold-out crowd at Terminal 5 seemed to be experiencing collective nostalgia for the early aughts, when Julian Casablancas, lead singer and songwriter of The Strokes, held court as the king of a new wave of rock and served as model for New York cool.
Under the steam of his middling new solo album, Phrazes for the Youth, and the long-lasting pull of his band’s 2001 classic, Casablancas drew a crowd made up predominately of kids that longed for a time that they could barely remember.
Cloaked absurdly in head-to-toe leather, he gave them what they wanted, or kind of what they wanted: that steely cool Joey Ramone stance, that lethargic Lou Reed sing-speak croon and that gravely maniac howl. But instead of standing next to Albert Hammond Jr., he was backed by his best attempt at a hipster Electric Light Orchestra. (I’m not putting down ELO, who doesn’t like catching a little “Mr. Blue Sky,” once and a while.)
These aren’t bad songs and they sound a lot better live then on his slickly produced album. But they all seem to be wanting the instrumentation of the Strokes—maybe just less prog-y—or a different vocal delivery. I’m not asking for Casablancas to hand these songs off to a pair of poppy, falsetto pipes. Last night, he proved perfectly capable of adapting his vocals to fit the song: First with his best new song the dance-y 11th Dimension. And then with his repeated homage to Alicia Keys’ chorus from “Empire State of Mind.” Casablancas might not have written any new anthems for New York kids, but he can still make them sound fresh.
So let’s look forward: maybe these flashes of brilliances will work their way into a new, overdue Strokes album or a better show tonight at Terminal 5 with Tanlines and Telepathe opening.
