In 2011, while the rest of the world was castigating Lou Reed and Metallica for the ghastly brutal, unpretty roar of “Branderburg Gate” and the rest of Lulu, I was enchanted by something that didn’t sound exactly like everything else, that, ugly or pretty, was viciously alive and completely uncommercial roar of rock and roll. Yeah, I sure did love Lulu and I could use more of it as, halfway through reviewing albums earlier this week, every damn drum sound, or do I mean electronic beat, sounded exactly one the one before it.
Into this marketplace, Julian Casablancas And The Voidz Tyranny enters with the weight of the world exploding on its back. Tyranny might not be a great, or even a good, album but if it is lousy it is lousy on terms unlike anybody. It takes the pop sensibility Casablancas perfected on 2009’s Phrasez For The Young and puts it in the middle of a cauldron of hard rock which disrupts the flow time after time.
The band, Jake Bercovici, Alex Carapetis, Jeramy Gritter, Jeff Kite, and Amir Yaghmai, are indie rock journeymen who give the album a gritty sorta jumping out at you point of view and a defocussed all over the place attitude which doesn’t quite meander because you can imagine the exact same album arranged to be either a Strokes or a pop album. “Human Sadness”, “Where No Eagles Fly” and “Father Electricity”, three consecutive songs in the heart of the album are all just waiting to explode and right under the toil and trouble roiling itself is a Beware All Who Enter here sign where the songs drone or jump, laod raggedly back then move forward into psychedelic jams and back to the melody. “The ten minute “Human Sadness” gets better and better with every listen.
Compared to the Strokes disappointing Angles and irrelevant Comedown Machine, Tyranny is a tyranny of sound and lowered expectations. It explodes and then it subsides, it is kinda like waves which roil and return. “This isn’t for everybody, this is for nobody”, Julian warns on the very first song, “The customer is obviously oblivious and wrong”.
Perhaps so. Tyranny is not an easy album to love and will undoubtedly be shunted aside soon, but at least it sounds unlike anything else out there.
Grade: B
