CD: “First Impressions of Earth”(RCA)
PERFORMER: The Strokes
NOTE: Parental advisory for explicit content

The Strokes third studio album “First Impressions of Earth” continues the band’s strategy of not sweeping people off of their feet. We get the Strokes’ usual winning recipe — clean-sounding, syncopated guitars over singer Julian Casablancas droning about relationships and young-adult apathy.

But like the band’s last album, 2003’s “Room on Fire,” the dry, pseudo-pop sound of “First Impressions” somehow isn’t as easy to swallow as it feels it should be. “You Only Live Once” opens the album with a jaunty Cars-like riff. Instinct urges you to tap the steering wheel or sing in the grocery store, but the song cuts those basic pop reflexes short. The song trainwrecks from verse to chorus. Casablancas’ sounds slightly off rhythm as if he didn’t have time for a second take.

Meet the Strokes’ signature sound. This raw, unrehearsed (almost amateurish) sound helped their 2001 debut, “Is This It,” thunder in with a herd of critical acclaim. It earned plaudits as the rock fan’s salvation after years of bubble-gum-teenie-pop a la Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys.

Now, it seems clear that the desperation to escape that Mickey Mouse club-induced hell forced non-pubescents to latch on to any gritty band with “the” in their name without really knowing the band. Pop culture rolled vastly different bands such as the Hives, the Vines, the White Stripes and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs into one genre: garage rock.

The Strokes make great music. Don’t be fooled by the oft-bouncy tunes: the songs on “First Impressions” go further than simple pop. “On the Other Side” professes happy misanthropy against a semi-sea chantey roll similar to the dark/light musings of the Doors. The song “Ask Me Anything” harnesses another pop Kafka, Nico, with a simple sonata played over an ode to insignificance. (Casablancas croons over again, “I’ve got nothing to say,” for a nice trivial chorus.)

The Strokes never do what’s expected of them, which might annoy people expecting love at first listen. Give “First Impressions” three or four chances to win you over.

Available at all local record stores.

–by Morgan Kelly

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