Julian Casablancas release confounding second album. It pays off after repeated listens
With The Strokes on vacation from the studio, Julian Casablancas’ new band The Voidz kick out their second album after a four-year break. "Kick" being the operative word because the archly titled Virtue bucks and flails with an art rock mongrel spirit that is likely to prove very polarising. The Voidz’ name could be a reference to the similarly bug-eyed Richard Hell and The Voidoids but Jules and co dismiss anything as conventional as song structures and opt for a willfully deranged, scattershot approach. Opening track Leave it in My Dreams certainly has all the cool languor of The Strokes but you’ll get a fuller picture of what’s going on here with Pyramid of Bones, which borrows both the guitars and Ozzy’s vocal from Black Sabbath’s Ironman. The Voidz spend the rest of the album engaged in acts of self-sabotage and while there’s madness in their method, after repeated listens Virtue is actually rather good.
Alan Corr @corralan
