Phrazes...

Julian Casablanca’s-Leeds Review

The man is an idol. I could leave the review at that in all honesty. I have been blessed with seeing a few of my hero’s on stage before Madness, The Specials and even the Maccabees but having sadly never seen The Strokes live before I had never seen Julian Casablanca’s in the flesh until now.

What can I say! He has more coolness in his little finger than NME’s new bands of 2010. Some people are just born that way. I wasn’t really expecting much having not really listened to his debut album ‘Phrazes for the young’ and expected a bit of a one band show with a backing band but instead the 7 piece were all in their own right brilliant musicians and eager not to let The Strokes front man take all the limelight.

This album and tour has been around 3 years in the making, Albert Hammond Jr has managed to knock out two albums, a gossip girl appearance and date the world’s biggest super model in the time that this album was produced, but quality defeats quantity.

The problem that Casablanca’s has is that he is the voice of easily the best band in the last decade and unless he made a country album with Hannah Montana’s dad it would be impossible to escape The Strokes similarities and that is just the way it rolls. But what I saw was someone who has brought together a band of considerable talent and produced quite a few very good songs. The stands outs were of course the single 11th Dimension with its synth laden backing beat and Out of the Blue which is a joy to see live.

My favourite song of the night was the stripped down version of ‘You only live once’ and it wasn’t just me singing every single lyric back at Casablanca’s and it is nights like this that you wonder why the hell The Strokes haven’t got their ass into gear and brought out another wonderful and heart-warming album. The music world may have been taken over by Kings of Leon and The Killers but I know who I would rather be right now and that man has just left fans across the world awaiting with baited breath any new songs from The New York Hipsters.


Julian Casablanca's Myspace