Julian vs. Julian

The Strokes and Interpol were arguably the most important bands to come out of New York City in the decade we are about to put to bed. They both mined vintage rock aesthetic and imbued it with new meaning and relevance for the new century. The Strokes looked back to garage rock and classics of the early days of mainstream rock and roll, Interpol to the eighties and shoegaze and, of course, Joy Division. Interpol became the progenitors of the new dark dance rock revolution that birthed The Killers, Bloc Party, Franz Ferdinand, The National and a bunch of others. Every one else, it seemed, traced their ancestory to The Strokes.

Interpol and The Strokes released their third albums just after the halfway mark of the decade to much critical unacclaim. It seemed to confirm their position as the bands of the early 2000s. Though they had created the new rock landscape, they were irrelevant in it. I personally like both albums but they are certainly not superior to the bands’ earlier efforts and can be easily written off as “more of the same”.

Cut to Fall 2009…both bands frontmen release solo debuts. Both albums’ artwork feature a guy sitting alone in the center of a room looking kind of bummed out. As if to say, “I did this. Me. No one else. And I’m not sure how I feel about it.” And, strangely, both are by a guy named Julian. Interpol singer Paul Banks uses a pseudonym here: Julian Plenti. I read somewhere this has something to do with his old days as a Eurotrash DJ or something… Julian Casablancas sounds equally made up but is all too real.

The stakes are the same. Each Julian wants to establish himself as the genius behind his band while distancing himself from them. If they do so successfully, the flaws of their recent group efforts can be attributed to the compromise of their vision by collaboration with bandmates. If they are unsuccessful, they will have to go back to making records with their former outfits who will each require a major shift to reverse their downward trajectory.

I’ve listened to both records and they both fall into the same trap. The most interesting bits of both are when the Julians deviate most significantly from the sound of their bands. Unfortunately, neither does this nearly enough. Plenti (Banks) takes the most risks and is, I think, the more rewarding listen. Casablancas seems to have an expansive vision but unfortunately his songwriting tends to tack too closely to Strokes territory. He attempts to achieve scale by extending the songs (the shortest song on the record is 4:05) and layering sounds on top of familiar templates. It’s just not working. It sounds too much like the last Strokes record which was that record’s problem to begin with.

There are some bright spots on these records, however. The opening track on Julian Plenti …is Skyscraper is maybe the best thing Banks has ever done, with or without Interpol. The last two tracks on Casablancas’ Phrazes for the Young are probably the biggest risks he takes on the record and I think point him in a direction he should pursue. Neither Julian has achieved his objective of cutting the umbilical chord but both have shown that they have unique visions outside the context of their bands and I’ll look for them to execute those visions more completely next time around.