New York's pretty boys return after a two-year break with the follow up to the difficult second album 'Room On Fire'. At sixty minutes the album is almost twice as long as the previous two stuck together and finds the band experimenting with both their sound and their song writing. It seems like business as usual from opener 'You Only Live Once' (bar the shock of hearing Casablancas' voice sans-distortion) but once the batman bass riff kick-starts 'Juicebox' you realise that they've bought some new records to go with their Blondie and Velvets bootlegs. At various points the album recalls Muse, Santana, The Jesus Lizard, The Pogues (on '15 Minutes') and Barry Manilow (the chorus of ‘Razor Blade’ is lifted wholesale from 'Mandy' and as a result is pretty damn memorable).
Overall, 'First Impressions Of Earth' is a bold and concerted effort from The Strokes to distance themselves from the tired New York scene they almost single-handedly instigated with their award-winning debut 'Is This It', and finds the band at a stylistic crossroads that should appeal to old fans and some new.