Musicians come to Coachella for all kinds of reasons: to hype fresh work, unveil an anticipated reunion, collect a fat paycheck. But not many use the annual music and arts festival in Indio to turn off members of their audience, as Julian Casablancas of the Strokes appeared eager to do at this year’s edition.

Prowling the stage of the Mojave Tent backed by his startling new band, the Voidz, the singer known for his indolent croon growled menacingly in songs that layered slashing guitars over breakneck digital-punk beats. His lyrics, though hard to make out, projected a sneering disgust at odds with the disheveled glamour embodied in Strokes tunes like “Last Nite” and “Barely Legal.” Willfully harsh, the show seemed designed to repel those expecting something sweetly Strokes-like — which after 15 minutes or so was what it did, leading Casablancas to declare, “This music was meant to alienate the right people,” as fans filed out of the Mojave.

“Yeah, I got a lot of grief for that,” the frontman said with a laugh recently when reminded of the performance. Yet neither the grief nor the Coachella crowd’s reaction deterred him. On Sept. 23, Julian Casablancas + the Voidz (as the group is officially billed) will release “Tyranny,” a bracing debut album full of soured political invective inspired by what he referred to as “all the insanity going on in America”: for him, corporate greed, police-state overreach, the destruction of the environment.

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Melodic but often brutally textured — and with knotty structures that stretch one song, “Human Sadness,” to nearly 11 minutes — the music sets aside the tidy songcraft that made the Strokes poster boys of the garage-rock revival that swept New York in the early 2000s. And Casablancas isn’t the only one moving on from those days.

Last week, his old friend Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs put out “Crush Songs,” a disarming solo disc that exchanges her band’s frantic throb for barebones acoustic arrangements. Written and recorded in 2006 and 2007, “Crush Songs” isn’t angry like “Tyranny”; its delicate melodies are as flush with romantic possibility as the record’s title suggests. But it similarly unsettles an established persona.

“I think maybe we both have more license to do these projects because we’ve been through it all before,” said Karen O, who still plays with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (as Casablancas does with the Strokes). “We’ve been around the block a few times, and with the good fortune to have had success with what we’ve done. That frees us up to present something you might not expect.”

For Casablancas, scheduled to appear with the Voidz at the Wiltern on Nov. 6, the shift comes none too soon; indeed, he called “Tyranny” the album he’d been striving to make since right after the Strokes’ hit 2001 debut, “Is This It.” The records he actually made were marred by a litany of compromises, Casablancas said: with his bandmates on the Strokes’ next few records and with his own commercial aspirations on “Phrazes for the Young,” his 2009 solo set.


“I really regret not following my heart for that,” he said over the phone from his home in New York. “In my head, I was like, ‘Do I want to do a weirder thing?’ But I thought it would’ve been swept under the rug, so I went the opposite way.” As it happened, “Phrazes for the Young” — an underrated electro-pop jaunt — was swept under the rug anyway; it sold fewer copies than any Strokes album, including last year’s “Comedown Machine,” roundly criticized as a careless fulfillment of the band’s contract with RCA Records.

So Casablancas, 36, was determined to stick to his guns for his first effort with the Voidz, whose members include players he’d originally recruited for solo shows. The aggressive sound, he said, reflects his lifelong love of punk bands like Black Flag and his more recent examination of “modern classical music and weird jazz.” And the lyrics channel his sense of outrage that began growing during George W. Bush’s presidency, which Casablancas called “a wake-up zone.”

“The rhetoric of America — ‘All men are created equal’ — that was a big deal that kind of spoke to the promise of this place,” he said. “But it’s been so hijacked. Now everyone’s just trying to get ahead, and it feels like it’s getting a little point-of-no-return-y.”

Jake Bercovici, who plays bass and keyboards, said the band’s music is intended to be challenging, even ugly. “But hopefully, it comes across as a considered grime,” he added.


That description seems equally to suit Casablancas’ approach at Cult Records, the label he founded as a way of ensuring creative control over “Phrazes for the Young.” Five years later, the company’s roster has grown — it’s issuing both “Tyranny” and “Crush Songs” — but it still operates like a scrappy indie, said Lysee Webb, who works with Casablancas at the label.

“One thing we’ve paid careful mind to is the kind of grass-roots campaigns that are so easily overlooked now,” Webb said, pointing to a network of street teams tasked with distributing stickers and fliers — old-school record-industry artifacts rarely seen in the iTunes era. There’s also the label’s limited-edition “Tyranny” cigarette lighter, which houses a USB flash drive loaded with MP3s of the album’s 12 songs.

“Sometimes Julian will say something and we’ll think it’s just a random thought,” said Warren Fu, another Cult staffer. “But then he’ll really want us to follow up on it.”

Karen O, who’ll perform three shows at Hollywood Forever Cemetery beginning Wednesday night, said she was drawn to Casablancas’ company in part because of that from-the-ground-up spirit. As with the Strokes, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ latest album, 2013’s “Mosquito,” completed the band’s deal with a major label; Karen O has also dabbled in music for theater and film, garnering an Oscar nomination earlier this year for “The Moon Song” from Spike Jonze’s “Her.” Cult, said the part-time Angeleno, feels like a welcome respite from the big time — and an appropriate home for a record as raw and as surprising as “Crush Songs.”


“When you start out making music, your attitude is so naive,” she said. “You’re reaching out, but to what you have no idea.” That changes once people take notice, she added; expectations can cloud one’s vision. “At this point in our careers, it’s nice to know you can return to that exploratory space.”

mikael.wood@latimes.com