Is This It?

1	Is That It 2:35
2	The Modern Age 3:32
3	Soma 2:37
4	Barely Legal 3:58
5	Someday 3:07
6	Alone, Together 3:12
7	Last Nite 3:17
8	Hard to Explain 3:47
9	When It Started 3:36
10	Trying Your Luck 3:27
11	Take It or Leave It 3:16

Barnes & Noble

Hands down the most anticipated rock-'n'-roll debut of 2001, the Strokes' Is This It? comes burdened with unrealistic expectations: that it will save guitar rock, that it's the reincarnation of 1970s CBGB's punk attitude, that it's this year's definitive New York album. Whatever. Forget the hype and just relish this swaggering, infectious, street-smart album. Vocalist Julian Casablancas falls in the tradition of gritty urban art-punks who trace their roots to Lou Reed and Iggy Pop, but Casablancas adds a nod to the Fall's Mark E. Smith. What makes this band of young New Yorkers -- prep school refugees in their early 20s -- exceptional is their balance of a sexy, rock star attitude with old-fashioned rock-'n'-roll rhythms that might actually get jaded, black-clad hipsters up and dancing. "Last Nite" lifts the bass line from the Supremes' "You Can't Hurry Love" and the guitar hook from Tom Petty's "American Girl" and arrives somewhere entirely new but completely familiar -- and irresistible. The 36-minute album includes all the songs from the singles that prompted the hype, although some of the versions differ. Maybe some tracks have more 'tude than tune, but that's quibbling in the face of such brash, exuberant, and genuinely exciting songs as "The Modern Age," "Someday," and "Hard to Explain." Perhaps the album title alludes to the inevitable letdown following a surge of hype, but the band needn't have worried: Yes, this is it. Steve Klinge

All Music Guide

Blessed and cursed with an enormous amount of hype from the British press, the Strokes prove to be one of the few groups deserving of their glowing reviews. Granted, their high-fashion appeal and faultless influences -- Television, the Stooges, and especially Lou Reed and the Velvets -- have "critics' darlings" written all over them. But like the similarly lauded Elastica and Supergrass before them, the Strokes don't rehash the sounds that inspire them -- they remake them in their own image. On the Modern Age EP, singles like Hard to Explain, and their full-length debut, Is This It, the N.Y.C. group presents a pop-inflected, second-generation take on late-'70s New York punk, complete with raw, world-weary vocals, spiky guitars, and an insistently chugging backbeat. However, their songs also reflected their own early-twenties lust for life; singer/songwriter/guitarist Julian Casablancas and the rest of the band mix swaggering self-assurance with barely concealed insecurity on "The Modern Age" and reveal something akin to earnestness on "Barely Legal" -- a phrase that could apply to the Strokes themselves -- in the song's soaring choruses. The group revamps "Lust for Life" on "New York City Cops" and combines their raw power and infectious melodies on "Hard to Explain," arguably the finest song they've written in their career. Nearly half of Is This It consists of their previously released material, but that's not really a disappointment since those songs are so strong. What makes their debut impressive, however, is that the new material more than holds its own with the tried-and-true songs. "Is This It" sets the joys of being young, jaded, and yearning to a wonderfully bouncy bassline; "Alone Together" and "Trying Your Luck" develop the group's brooding, coming-down side, while "Soma," "Someday," and "Take It or Leave It" capture the Strokes at their most sneeringly exuberant. Able to make the timeworn themes of sex, drugs, and rock & roll and the basic guitars-drum-bass lineup seem new and vital again, the Strokes may or may not be completely arty and calculated, but that doesn't prevent Is This It from being an exciting, compulsively listenable debut when those are few and far between. [In light of the World Trade Center disaster, the track "New York City Cops" was pulled from the U.S. release]. Heather Phares

Rolling Stone

So what does the best young rock band in America sound like? Frantic, for starters…. The short, choppy guitar riffs and bottles-breaking-on-the-sidewalk drumbeats bring to mind the punk rock of New York and London, to be sure, but Is This It jumps along like punk as played by a boogie band; that is, a band in a mad rush to get to the finish and gram a cold beer and a warm girl.… [It's] more joyful and intense than anything else I've heard this year. Joe Levy

Blender

The biggest draw is the Iggy-Jagger sexual charisma of 22-year-old singer Julian Casablancas, whose self-possessed cool is astonishing. Mark Lepage