(Do Ya Think) I'm Sexy

It's one of the iron-clad rules of rock: if the NY Times puff piece about your burdgeoning solo career starts off with a description of your "new life" in LA, complete with effusive praise for the healthy lifestyle and the weather, it's a lock that your new solo album is going to suck: Julian Casablancas, Thriving On Sunshine

JULIAN Casablancas, savior of debauched New York City rock ’n’ roll, is sober now and living in Los Angeles. The shaggy-haired frontman of the Strokes, who not so long ago could be seen stumbling home from East Village bars around dawn, a rightly sloppy paragon of the city’s resurgent downtown scene, is currently renting a white Spanish-style house in the Silver Lake neighborhood. He just bought a car for $1,000: a ’92 Cutlass with a garish neon-green-and-gray paint job. He likes driving around and listening to the radio. He likes the sunshine. He is smitten.

“It’s fun; I won’t lie,” he said on a recent visit back east. “L.A.’s kind of, like, seven really cool towns. It’s so laid-back. If you go in the right spot, you can walk around, and you don’t need a car. It’s a lot easier to eat healthy. And the weather!”

As Ron Wood once said, "Actors move to Hollywood, musicians don't"