Album Review: Virtue by the Voidz

Look, I’ll be frank: reviewing stuff sucks. Artists can drop trash on the floor and call it art and all of a sudden you’re existentially questioning your role in the grand machine and finding the trash deeper than a Seth Rogen film… wait. What? Anyway, now, here we have the Voidz.

Let’s stick to the basics here: the Voidz are a Garage Rock/Rock type of sci-fi noise thing fronted by ex-Strokes guy Julian “I don’t want to do this anymore” Casablancas and driven by Amir/Gritter/Jake with backing by Carapetis/Kite.

The Voidz first album was an underrated sleeper as most good debut albums are. Anthems like “Human Sadness”, “Business Dog,” and “Where No Eagles Fly” stood out from the dystopian soundscape to generally positive rants. Then, time passed and people wondered if Julian was ever going to do Strokes again. He then dropped “Future, Present, Past” with the strokers to middling reviews… but alas no Strokes LP. In it’s stead we get the Voidz second LP: Virtue.

I didn’t know what to expect from this album so my expectations were low. The early stuff that leaked onto Youtube looked weird and goofy. I couldn’t wrap my mind around it. Then, the complete album dropped, I bought some new headphones to prepare myself, loaded the album on my player and BOOM! I was instantly into it. I initially felt it dragged toward the end but that was only because I was still in the early listening stages. Now, I see it for the complete work that it is.

The album begins with a relentless first set that begins with “In My Dreams”, includes “Permanent High School” and finishes with “All Wordz Are Made Up” before slowing down with the chill-out warnings of “Think Before You Drink”. This set here would be an all-time classic as an EP and I can’t really say enough about it. It’s everything you want in an album: Experimentation, Melody, Aggression, Fusion.

The second half of the album is rawer and dirtier. I could imagine that something considered raw would tend to be cleaner… bloodier, perhaps. Like freshly cut meat. But no… this is dirty, filthy, clotty stuff with punk compositions thrown in for structure-destructing affirmation. Whoever the F is composing this has done a lot of research and must be praised. There seems to be elements from the whole post-garage rock timeline thrown in as well as sprinkles of semi-hard Moroder electro-synth. I don’t know the creative process for these guys, but if the sound came from Julian, from the band as a whole, or from a visionary producer, please bring us more of this stuff. If you know Cult Records and are familiar with the production on The Growlers last effort, this may live in an aesthetically familiar planet but amped up into a darker, disillusioned future. A future that doesn’t really take itself too seriously and a band that is seemingly taking her easy for all us sinners.

Grade: Listen to it.

Luke Logan is a DJ and music historian based in Rockaway, New York. You can listen to his sound selections here.