Bold New Taste.: Forgive Them Even If They Are Not Sorry.

Greetings. So, here on TOM (my creative acronym for Tales of Misfortune. Good, isn't it?), I've decided to discuss music. Recently, one of the bands I've grown to like, arguably as much as Pink Floyd or the Smashing Pumpkins, is the Strokes. The band somehow began to grow on me. They had a unique simple musical style, with great guitar lines, a tremendous rhythm section, and the unique, droning, and half-asleep-sounding vocals of Julian Casablancas. However, after their 2006 album First Impressions of Earth, they all decided to do their own thing. Albert Hammond Jr. went on a solo stint, which actually was pretty freaking good (check it out if you want to), Nikolai Fraiture started a solo project called Nickel Eye (get it?!), Fabrizio Moretti joined a band known as Little Joy, which I haven't heard much of, and Nick Valensi........well, is with his family. But what about Julian? What has he been doing? Sure, he's worked on a couple of songs, including this catchy song for a Converse commercial and a guest vocal on The Lonely Island ("I saw a Spanish guy doing the Bartman"), but he hasn't got his own musical thing going on, nor is he raising the family. So what is he doing?

He answers our question by preparing to release a solo album. Titled "Phrazes For The Young". In my homeland of the US, it comes out on November 3rd (I think), but I've heard two tracks from it, 11th Dimension and River of Brakelights. And both are really good. They're definitely different from the Strokes laid-back style of garage rock, and they're more electronic sounding, even. 11th Dimension is super catchy and has Julian singing the line that this blog is titled from, "forgive them, even if they are not sorry." River of Brakelights is a completely different animal. It's 5 minutes of the strangest sounding electronic music you'll likely ever hear.

However, don't take my word for it: listen for yourself.