rarely have i been as disappointed in an album as i am with julian casablancas's phrazes for the young. i loved the strokes, whose singer casablancas was. i loved the bashing garage-rock of the first couple of discs, which had a lot of good music bubbling beneath the smashed surface. and i really loved first impressions of earth, more or less the best rock album of the oughts, which took the sound much more toward some sort of craft (specifically, excellent songcraft), but retained a lot of rock urgency and straightforwardness. and casablanca's lyrics were interesting throughout. well, you know it's hard trying to keep young rock guy from going baroque. really, jc has lost everything that made his music interesting: now he's got synths and drum machines; like everyone else he's trying to sound like the cure, but he missed the revival by five years; the lyrics about alcohol are ok but only ok. etc. there's not a single cut i really like or don't actually find tedious.