Phoenix rebirth or an adolescent insane dream from an adult who hasn’t grown?

Baby Casablancas turned 36 last month and he let us - as a gift for ones or as a personal destruction for others - his new solo (+ the Voidz) album, Tyranny. With an anarchist fuck raised to the world, he simply lost control. Singing “They like to change the rules as they go” and claiming to the New Musical Express that he “travelled too far into the future for some minds” he may haven’t change the world but at least he explodes the music universe. With the bomb he launched, minds are indeed extremely divided. At times he strikes us with a hard and violent work (Take me in your Army), at others he lost the war against capitalism in the desperate Human Sadness. Back to the early 70’s, he transforms the music as he wants to : mixing violent rock and electronic sounds in Where No Eagles Fly. He lost us in fact. Some simply ask for the Strokes back, some are stuck on his Instant Crush. Tyranny is all but those kind of music. So is he really waiting for our tight minds to grow up and finally appreciate his futuristic music, perch on his Mount Olympus? Or is it a simple delirium between friends, closed in their garage and playing music to impress 14yo girls? Nails, greasy hairs, leather jackets and big boots, the second impression seems the good one. Tyranny is dark, violent, angry and wants to be anarchist. Julian looks like an adolescent who want to change the world, set it on fire, change the rule of this nation of sheeps, ruled by wolves, owned by pigs. In fact it’s the sounds of Julian Casablancas’ very own escape from New York, claiming ‘punk’s not dead and neither is rock’. In a quiet music world he spills everything up, like the naughty and unwise rock child, substituting to his eldest Richards, Jagger, Doherty and Gallagher, who are from now really quiet - maybe too much? Britpop is dead or at least boring, so much that Liam is still every week in NME’s columns. So maybe we needed this noisy and strange album to move our head, tap our foot and mess things up.

Because this album is a mess. A destruction. A self-destruction? All those feelings are thrown in the M.utually A.ssured D.estruction (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9TGP9zPMwU). He is angry. But after all, the album ends on Julian’s retirement with Off to war… Is everything fucked? Have he deserted his own war? Have we completly lost him? He let us on a disappointment feeling after all this anger he had woke up in the depth of ourself.

That some like it or not, he seems like he doesn’t give a fuck. And we should probably do the same, like it or leave it, and yell a huge fuck to those Business Dog while we share a pint of the worst beer with our old friend and demigod Julian.

Cheers!