Julian Casablancas is at his most experimental and eclectic yet with his newest Voidz project, "Virtue." A futuristic and chaotic art rock trip, Virtue never stops experimenting throughout its entire length.
Virtue treads the line of constantly being too over the top and cheesy, without ever actually crossing it; a harder ideal to follow than it sounds. Though the album is largely art and experimental rock, it also fuses hypangogic pop, punk, and psychedelia through its songs. The album is furthermore not electronic in any way, but often still seems it as these genres all mend together to create a perfectly technological sound.
Some songs, such as "Pyramid of Bones" or "QYURRYUS" are increasingly loud and noisy, almost like noise rock. Other tracks, however, are spacey and psychedelic, like Pointlessness. Still, others are almost straight indie pop, like "Leave It in My Dreams." Every song still flows together and with each other perfectly, however, as it seems like one artistic work as a whole; once again, never going over the top.
With such a large variety of genres, it is amazing that Casablancas has been able to be as creative as he has been in "Virtue." Ever since "Is This It," Casablancas has been trying to recapture the once perfect masterpiece he produced.
It has only been downhill since the 2001 album, with "Room on Fire" being similar but worse, and everything else afterward, with their various projects and names, even worse so. Though they may have a good song or two on them, overall -- as cohesive works in themselves -- they lack greatly.
"Virtue" is finally a breadth of fresh air in that it calls back to the artistic integrity and uniqueness of "Is This It." It is an album that can be both artistic and mainstream at the same time, two ideals that "Is This It" enacted perfectly.
"Virtue" is perfect for today's society, as a commentary on how the youth of the present will soon have to fair in the future that is near coming. It seems Casablancas has finally "got" it again, for the first time in over a decade.
Though some tracks don't work as well as others, like "black hole," which calls back to Casablancas' more boring past projects, overall the new album calls for an exciting future for Julian. If he can build off music like this, he could easily become a large and influential presence in the music world again.
Lastly, the album cover is one of the most perfect representations of the music contained in it in years - if that says nothing about the consistency of the music, then nothing will.
