Julian Casablancas: HMV Forum (16/12/09)
Last night Julian Casablancas played the second of two sold-out nights at the HMV Forum. And what a disappointing night it was.
Casablancas appeared onstage at 9:20 wearing a sleeveless leather jacket and looking every inch the rock star, before launching into Ludlow Street, which sounded a bit like the Pogues and was an underwhelming opener. Casablancas was joined onstage by two drummers, a keyboard player and a guitarist.
It wasn’t until three songs in, when the keyboards signalled the intro to 11th Dimension, that the crowd looked remotely interested. That didn’t stop Casablancas from talking mindless nonsense in-between songs about how “fuckin’ awesome” the crowd was. It soon became clear why Julian Casablancas rarely does interviews, his personality does not seem to match his rock star look at all - a bit like David Beckham, he would be well-advised to keep his mouth shut. Still, he meant well, and it was nice of him to talk to the crowd, but his banter was pretty abysmal.
The excellent Out of the Blue came early in the set, which provoked some excitement and a singalong, but it didn’t seem to lift the oppressive air of disappointment, which Casablancas either didn’t pick up on, or completely ignored as he continued to spout crap like “Shit man, um yeh, let’s fuckin’ do this”. A low point was reached with the awful “I Wish it Was Christmas Today”. Things picked up slightly with the excellent “Left & Right in the Dark”, but “Tourist” was one of the worst dirges I have ever paid to sit through.
After a brief break, Casablancas returned to play a fairly sweet cabaret-style version of You Only Live Once, just him and a piano, although he did stop himself halfway through to spout more bollocks, before struggling to remember where he was, with the momentum by then completely lost. He finished with Glass, and the crowd stumbled home like they’d just found out Father Christmas didn’t exist.
You can’t deny Julian Casablancas has a great voice, but outside The Strokes he seems lightweight, the songs aren’t good enough (unlike Albert Hammond Junior’s two excellent solo albums) and he doesn’t have the charisma to pull it off. There was nothing of the “amazing light show” Casablancas had talked about in interviews leading up to the tour, just plain old rock and roll with a little bit of Duran Duran thrown in. The Strokes reunion cannot come soon enough.
December 17th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
Yeah I was disappointed too
December 18th, 2009 at 7:44 am
Yeah what a jip
December 20th, 2009 at 3:57 am
You have a point about the banter, needs a little work. However, I thought it was a good gig. The crowd may have been a tad naive to think every song would have had the same impact/sound as say 11th / left&right… have they actually heard the album? I thought highlights other than the obvious ones were river of brakelights and 4chords, i also thoroughly enjoyed i wish it was xmas today. After early criticisms julian’s voice, i think he has done extremely well to create such an instantly recognisable and sought after sound.
December 21st, 2009 at 7:57 am
Hmm tis a shame i love all the songs….. on the cd. live? sad time to be a fan.