Julian Casablancas – I Wish It Was Christmas Today

I spent the better part of Fall 2001 and most of 2002 listening to The Strokes’ debut album ‘Is This It’. Needless to say, this LP was near perfection.

Subsequent album releases from the band have proven to be disappointing and I was sure that they would either fade away into obscurity or go on to do mediocre solo projects. It’s probably still too early to tell. Either of those could still happen, but this single by Julian Casablancas is hopefully a sign that I’m wrong.

With a synthy Phoenix-type pop aesthetic, it’s dancey and still has some rawness that goes so well with Casablancas’ voice. I’ll admit it… I’m caught off guard by how good this first single is.

Julian Casablancas – 11th Dimension

Phrazes For The Young gets released Oct 19 in the UK and Oct 20 in North America. Go get it.

Sparklehorse’s Mark Linkous and Danger Mouse of Gnarls Barkley fame have co-labbed on a crazy lil album called, Dark Night of The Soul. The album was to be sold with a coffee table book of similarly dark David Lynch photographs (who’s singing talents are also featured in two of the songs).

Somewhere along the line, EMI who was behind the project, decided to pull the plug on it.

The production team decided to pull a little stunt and the book has ended up for sale through, Dnots.com and includes a blank cd-r in place of the album with the message ‘For Legal Reasons, enclosed CD-R contains no music. Use it as you will,’. *Which I think is a hint that you should download it? The book has subsequently sold out.

Apparently this all has something to do with an ongoing dispute between Danger Mouse and EMI which dates back to DM’s Beatles/Jay-Z mash up, the Grey Album which contained uncleared use of the Beatles catalog which EMI owns. The album was responsible for launching Danger Mouse from bedroom producer to superstar, overnight.

The album includes an all star cast of contributors, everyone from Nina Persson of the Cranberries, Iggy Pop, Wayne Coyne, of the Flaming Lips, Black Francis of the Pixies, James Mercer of the Shins (I can go on, but I won’t).

The album has **somehow** managed to survive and make it out to the good ole world wide web.

The stand out track to me, is this here little ditty by Julian Casablancas of the Strokes. While there are some misses on the album it is definitely worth a listen. I give it a 7 winnies out of 10 rating. They are streaming it over at Dnots.com.

Danger Mouse & Sparklehorse – Little Girl feat Julian Casablancas