The Voidz - Like All Before You Review

The Voidz continue to bulge with futuristic ideas, they just can’t quite prioritise the ones that work.

There are parallels, Julian Casablancas suggested to Vulture magazine, to actors who balance their time between jobs on big budget films that help them to pay their bills and the projects they are more passionate about. Casablancas was responding to a question as to whether his work with The Strokes brings him as much fulfilment as his work with The Voidz. 

Casablancas has not made it a secret that he sees his second band as his primary creative outlet and a space he can test ideas that wouldn’t fit The Strokes’ well honed template of interlocking guitars, taut rhythms and meticulous arrangements that has earnt them number one albums, headliner status and a reputation that Casablancas can rely on to pay the bills. But if listeners know by now what they can expect from The Strokes, the first two Voidz records displayed a band committed to trying on as many musical stylings as they could think of, sometimes morphing multiple times over the course of one song. Debut album Tyranny was more ambitious than anything Casablancas would ever attempt with The Strokes, but was often an uncomfortable and disorienting experience, like walking into a hall of mirrors where all the lights are constantly flickering off and on again. If follow up Virtue was a smoother and less abrasive listen, it retained the spirit of experimentation over its gamut of 15 tracks that tackled Strokes-lite indie, acid jazz, nu-metal and any other genre the band could fit into its run time.

So with a pick ‘n’ mix bag full of singles released in the the six years between the second and this, the third, Voidz record, the bets were off as to what they would come back with. At a modest 10 tracks, Like All Before You is their most succinct record, yet one that continues the scattergun experimentation that is capable of burnishing brilliantly weird highs and frustratingly indulgent lows which leaves the listener with an overriding feeling of frustration. Casablancas has long had an undeniable ear for a melody so when Square Wave’s Age of Consent adjacent guitar riff bounces into the record it is hard not to feel reassured and excited that The Voidz have struck a tone that suits them. But that contentment is quickly dashed when the singer’s voice bleats out indecipherable lyrics through the robot voice module that he seems convinced is a worthwhile tool in his armoury, like your friend who keeps trying to tell you the Bitcoin he has invested in is finally about to take off. The rest of the song has a delightful, melancholy jangle but you can’t help but wonder what it would have sounded like had a producer confiscated Casablancas’ voice changing toys.

And this defeat from the jaws of victory effect happens sporadically on Like All Before You. Spectral Analysis is an eerie, leaner companion to The Strokes’ 80’s Comedown Machine. Casablancas’ distant voice is accompanied by the sound of a haunted piano, like he is reading the opening transcript of a Star Wars movie only for the singer to zap the listener out of any trance they were threatening to fall under with the jarring line ‘I am afraid it is too late, we put cyanide in your cake’. If that line prompts the listener to raise an eyebrow, the bizarre Herman Munster impression on When Will the Time of These Bastards End will surely cause a furrowed brow.

The Strokes, Casablancas once hoped, would sound like a band from the past sent to the future to make music. Intentionally or not, The Voidz sound like the inverse to this, a band from the future sent to the past. And if the doomer synths and bombastic, compressed guitar solos on Perseverance-1C2S are anything to go by, they come with a warning from the scorched ends of the earth. The record’s most battle ready song and early highlight is Prophecy of the Dragon. Drummer Alex Carapetis has long been an underrated asset to The Voidz, his percussion often just about holding the stretch of his band’s ideas together under the strain of their weight. Here he guides them through metal guitars, sparse freakouts and bleeding electronic solos. 

It is one of a handful of times where The Voidz’s eclecticism clicks, and when it does the results are beguiling. Flexorcist and All The Same are sumptuous pop numbers, the former complete with handclaps and an “ah!” from Casablancas that is a welcome reminder of just how effortless he can make all of this sound. All The Same is so pretty and relaxed that it doesn’t really matter that the only words you can decipher from Casablancas’ mumbling are “I’m gonna disappear into thin air”.

A lyric sheet is a useful companion to anyone listening to a Voidz record, it can help to clock the moments Casablancas appears to break the fourth wall and speak directly to the listener. On Tyranny “This isn’t for everybody / this is for nobody” (Take Me in Your Army) and on Virtue “Don’t overthink it” (Leave it in My Dreams), “Playing it too safe is dangerous” (Wink). The most obvious equivalent on Like All Before You is when Casablancas sings “Sorry I was not the man you wanted me to be” on 7 Horses. As if conceding The Voidz will probably not do everything just how you like it - they will frustrate, intrigue and surprise you in equal measure but those looking for the things they recognise Casablancas for the most may have to look to his other project.