The Strokes :: "Angles For The Young" [An Alternate Proposal]

Could New York's most darling band have combined their front man's solo record and their most recent LP and started saving their legacy? The band plays a sold-out Madison Square Garden this evening.

The collective anticipation for the latest Strokes LP Angles was followed by a group exhale riddled with the disappointing notes of a sigh. This wasn't what we wanted, especially the latter half of the album. These emotions were quickly ratified by a series of editorial pieces about the record, most of which refused to even address its musical content, choosing to focus on the methodology of the album making. All criticism distilled down to the functional reality that the Strokes tried to make a more equitable song writing process and had essentially failed. Barbs were traded. Casablancas is a dictator. These other guys are schlubs. Hammond was on drugs and then in rehab. Casablancas finally copped to the need to make a fifth Strokes LP as quickly as possible, either an ode to how comparatively mediocre Angles was or a need to finally escape the grip of the totalitarian five record deal the band has with RCA. But it didn't have to go this way did it? Or, at the very least, we can envision a different path for the band.

So for a moment, let us ride the counterfactual train into 2008 when the band could have taken some of Casablancas' ideas (and their reluctance to do drove him to make Phrazes), added a few of their own and made a record truly worth the wait. In essence, drop the filler off Angles and fill it with the most reasonable matches from Phrazes For The Young. After the jump, we give you, Angles For The Young, the Strokes album that never happened but maybe should have.

Julian Casablancas announces solo record [Video]

Julian Casablancas has officially gone the way of his band mates and will be releasing a solo album in the coming months. It will be called Phrazes For The Young. The video preview gets moving at the halfway point. Connections are drawn between organic form and human creation (it's like the record industry, people!). Finally, we enter a prism and a vaguely Aztec design, as messages like "try not to give advice you can't follow" and "drunkness is cowardice, sobriety is loneliness" flash in time.



The music? Well, it sounds epic. It sounds like Julian is putting everyone on notice. If you're going to screw around and make a solo record. At least, do it right.

On The List :: Albert Hammond Jr @ The Hiro Ballroom [7.9.08]

Albert Hammond Jr.'s parents are out of town. He steps to the stage a little before 11pm with the panache of a guy getting away with something: overly bold with an undercurrent of "I hope no one finds out about this." He has four people with him. If you're scoring at home, that's three guitars, one bass, and a drummer who looks like he could give solid minutes at small forward on a recreational basketball team. Hammond is unimpressive. I hope no one tells Mom and Dad.

Hammond is promoting a new album, his second since his parent group, The Strokes, last put together a studio effort. The songs sound exactly like Strokes songs (I suppose this is not surprising) but it seems little questionable why he is making music independent of the band. Most solo records are overly ambitious efforts from lead-singers who believe they outclass and out-pace their band mates. This is arrogant. The other kind of solo album or side-project comes when someone in the band wants to make music in a different genre. This is liberating. Hammond is simply writing Strokes songs on his own. Frankly, it's hard to believe he's not just trying on Julian Casablancas' blazer while Dad is out of town. This is dishonest.

From the upper balcony VIP section (thanks SPIN Magazine!) it's easy to get a look at the crowd. They seem excited to see Hammond and most of them waited 90-minutes for him to take the stage. Once he begins to play and The Strokes comparisons are more obvious, everything seems a little more dirty. Hammond isn't particularly compelling as a frontman. With a strong sense that he's ripping off his parent band, it's hard to get behind anything he's doing. Beyond the first two rows of the crowd, people are barely paying attention.

Part of the problem is psychological. Most people didn't really come to see Albert Hammond - they came to see one-fifth of The Strokes. But what they were seeing was even less than that. They were seeing a rhythm-guitarist cheat on his band for the second-time in two years. It doesn't matter that the records aren't half-bad. It's easy to see why none of The Strokes are here and why none of them came to his Mercury Lounge show last week. I wouldn't want to see my sound ripped-off and dragged around either.

So we return to the RCA records table (which, it bears noting, no one is sitting at) and work on our third bottle of vodka. Someone noted earlier that this is the brand of vodka Keith Richards was drinking when he fell out of the palm tree two years ago. But that was a real guitarist and a real rockstar. This evening is fueled by something different. As Hammond finishes his set, you half-expect Casablancas and Fabrizio to walk out, grab the mics and say, "thanks for warming our crowd up. We'll take it from here." Or more dramatically, for Casablancas to slap Hammond across the face and set everything back right. You can only get away with so much and when Dad gets home, there's hell to pay for what you've done.

Listen :: Albert Hammond Jr. - In Transit

photos courtesy of ndavis2008