Julian Casablancas and The Voidz at Governors Ball 2014

After a rather disappointing set at SXSW, I had lowered my expectations quite a bit for Julian Casablancas and The Voidz’s set at Governors Ball. While the set didn’t blow me away by any means, it was a definite improvement from what I saw in Austin.

With a larger stage to roam and a better sound man at the helm, Julian and his boys were free to deliver that harsh guitar crunch that they so badly want to deliver. Backed by video clips of cartoons and weird 80s clips, the band rocked out freely, with Casablancas fully engulfed in this (almost) alternative persona that he takes on with the band. There’s quite a bit of stuff going on within each track, with multiple guitar freakouts or the different sets of scattered ideas almost colliding against one another. It will be interesting to see how the recorded versions of these songs turn out when their debut album is released this September (as Julian announced during the show).

The highlight of the set was when he performed “Instant Crush”, his stunning Daft Punk collaboration. He choose not to play this when I saw him at SXSW, so I was grateful to hear it live, as it’s probably the closest thing I’ll ever get to seeing Daft Punk live these days. It threw me off that he played it second in the set, but hey, I’m not complaining.