Interview by Tom Lanham

It’s late in the evening, way past the dinner hour, but Julian Casablancas is still hard at work in a rehearsal studio, fine-tuning every last detail of his upcoming solo tour to the point where he’s instructing each of his backing musicians exactly where to stand onstage during each song. “It’s been kind of a craaaaazy day,” the Strokes leader sighs. “We’ve been at this for hours now, and it looks like we’re gonna be here deep into the night.”
    But for this particularly meticulous maestro, practice does indeed make perfect. And the graveyard shift makes perfect sense, since the eight inventive tracks on Phrazes For The Young — his first sans-Strokes outing — have a dark, nocturnal feel, particularly the barroom-waltzing “Ludlow St.,” the after-dark-disco of “11th Dimension” and the drunken-blues swagger of “4 Chords Of The Apocalypse.” The set’s galloping opener “Out Of The Blue” instantly rekindles that magical spark of the Strokes’ 2001 debut, Is This It, with sneering rock star lyrics like “I know I’m going to hell in a leather jacket/ At least I’ll be in another world while they’re pissin’ on my casket.”  There are so many complicated motifs rippling through the songs, it’s easy to understand Casablancas’s fretting over their live presentation.
    Ever since the Strokes went on hiatus following 2006’s First Impressions Of Earth, Casablancas, 31, has been anything but idle. He’s gotten married, and he’ll soon become a father. He’s launched his own label, Cult Records, with Phrazes as its first official release. With Santigold and Pharrell, he recorded “My Drive Thru” for Converse, then tracked “Boombox” with Andy Samberg’s Lonely Island, and just completed a version of Saturday Night Live’s campy Yuletide ditty, “I Wish It Was Christmas Today.” He’s also part owner of the hip LA Korean restaurant Shin, and in his spare time he’s actually been rehearsing with the Strokes again for a possible 2010 comeback. What does it all mean? Casablancas took a quick nightshift break to file a full ShockHound report.

SHOCKHOUND: You’ve actually recorded that cheesy-synth SNL Christmas song?

JULIAN CASABLANCAS: Yeah. I recorded it with the band I’ve been playing live with. And I’ve always thought that, if ever I was gonna do a Christmas song, well, that’s the one. I just thought it would be a cool thing. And I don’t know why it got released already on iTunes, to be honest  — I didn’t mean to do that. It was just gonna be kind of a joke for Christmas.

SHOCKHOUND: Well, that should guarantee you a guest slot on SNL this year, right?

CASABLANCAS: I dunno. I doubt it. But we’ll see about that. I won’t hold my breath, though.

SHOCKHOUND: Congrats on being about to become a dad. Do you know if it’s a boy or girl yet?

CASABLANCAS: Thank you. But no, I don’t know. The New York Post knew, apparently…they ran a story on it. But I’m excited. I think sometimes children are just a natural thing. Not like it’s unimportant — it’s gonna be the most important thing for me. But still, you just go on, and it’s not like you have to stop everything and change who you are, or dress different, comb your hair different, go to different places. Obviously, you’re not gonna sleep as much, because you’re protecting your little one through their first sensitive months. And some people make it seem like everything’s gonna be different, but in some kind of negative way. But for me, it’s just a natural thing. I think it’s gonna be great.

SHOCKHOUND: Without the Strokes around, have you been the reclusive artist, concocting this album in your lonely garret?

CASABLANCAS: It’s always been like that for me, a little bit. But eventually, I bring [the songs] to the band. But I haven’t really changed my process that much — I’m still busy. But with this record, the only thing that happened was that it was a little more legwork, because you don’t have the usual people around. I mean, I didn’t have to figure it out — I had it all worked out. But I just wanted to get professional players to play super-complicated things.

SHOCKHOUND: And there’s a super-deluxe boxed edition, too.

CASABLANCAS: I wanted to do it so that even if you hated the content, you basically get a really nice box out of it, a mahogany-type treasure chest/jewelry box that you can use for whatever. So even if you feel like “What the hell? This is bullshit,” at least it’ll be somewhat worth it because you got a cool box outta the deal. Plus you get a bunch of other stuff, like me playing the songs acoustically, and a storybook, a lyric book. But it’s all based on the music, based on enhancing the aura of the music.

SHOCKHOUND: And it comes with a Cult Records pin. Even in the Strokes, you always cleverly marketed yourself with pins, badges.

CASABLANCAS: Yeah! And Cult Records is the label that I am attempting to start. And am I planning on signing other artists? Hopefully. We’ll see how this record goes. I mean, this is like the first thing we’re working on, so if it’s a disaster, maybe we don’t even wanna sign anyone new — we wouldn’t wanna put anyone through that. But if it goes well, we’ll see who’s interested and we’ll go from there. But the idea was to only work with music that we thought was really, really great.

SHOCKHOUND: Speaking of which, this album really recaptures that ephemeral spirit of the first Strokes album.

CASABLANCAS: Thanks. It was fun, to be honest. It was nice to give up the Strokes, in a way. Because I used to do a lot with them — basslines, drumbeats, guitar solos. And then I think we were trying to make it work more like a democracy, so it was fun to just go back to being involved on every level and work out every detail. Except, you know, not having to funnel everything through the two-guitars-bass-and-one-drum thing. It was fun, because I’d been working on all these weird polyrhythmic drum things. And also, I’ve always written on guitar and keyboards, so this time around, if something was written on keyboards I just kept it on keyboards. And I definitely learned that keyboard tones are way more sensitive than guitar tones — there’s a much finer line between a horrible sound and an awesome sound on a keyboard. With a keyboard, it’s more like clothing — there’s a very fine line between looking sexy and absolutely ridiculous.

SHOCKHOUND: You seem to be reflecting on your life throughout Phrazes, then coming to some conclusions.

CASABLANCAS: So what are the conclusions?

SHOCKHOUND: That you’ve made a few enemies over the years, but fuck ‘em. Or maybe you’re a little apologetic about it.

CASABLANCAS: Heh heh. A little bit of both, probably. Not a little bit of both — somewhere in between. And not to overanalyze, but I think it’s been a little tough trying to navigate this whole….Like I’ve said, I didn’t want to do a solo record. So I feel like, without honestly explaining everything, I kinda felt like I had no choice. Like I was kinda forced into it. So I’ve just been negotiating that, and it’s been tough. And I feel like everyone [in the Strokes] went off in different directions, and that’s cool, I respect that. But I just felt like my hand got forced a little bit. But we’re still getting along good, so I think the break has been good for us. It’s not like this thing that broke apart — people need space, and I respect that.

SHOCKHOUND: So you were reading Oscar Wilde when you came up with the album title?

CASABLANCAS: If you’re asking about his phrasebook [Phrases and Philosophies For the Use of the Young], I just stumbled upon that maybe four or five years ago. I was looking at this book, and the title page was written as 20-40 quotes with numbers, and I was like “Wow! What is this? Teach me, O wise one!” I just thought I was gonna get all the answers I’d been looking for in this book, but it was more just commenting on what shallow, superficial animals we are. It was like the witty, intellectual standup comedy of the day. So it wasn’t what I was hoping it was, but I played with the idea and had the title floating around as a possible album title. But basically, I just felt that my lyrics weren’t good enough to call it that. So I just shelved it and thought “Okay — I’ve gotta accomplish some good, deep shit here.” Uhh, if I can call my record that.

SHOCKHOUND: Why the Phrazes misspelling? Because that is how the young would probably spell it these days.

CASBABLANCAS: Ha! You know what’s funny? I thought that’s how Oscar Wilde spelled it for two or three years, so I was just copying him, straight up. I was paying homage, because in the copy I had I could’ve sworn it was with a Z! But by the point I realized it wasn’t, I’d gotten so attached to it that I just couldn’t spell it with an S anymore. I was kinda stuck with it at that point.

SHOCKHOUND: So each Stroke kills the thing he loves?

CASABLANCAS: What’s that? Ohhhhhh! I geddit! I think that Oscar Wilde was super-smart. But I definitely feel like I’m a little more hopeful than he was. Even if we are just animals, I’m still a little more optimistic.